Quintura is a search engine based on a visual search engine technology and makes use of Yahoo’s index. “We approached the problem of finding Internet-based information from the standpoint of the userâ€? says Yakov Sadchikov, co-founder and CEO of Quintura. “We strive to bring web users a new search experience that is visual and intuitive.”

What makes Quintura different
The visual part is this: When you do a search on Quintura, your search term appears at the center of a cloud — not unlike a tag cloud, but consisting of related search terms, not tags. I’ll call it a search cloud. These related search terms help you narrow your query.

The font size of the terms indicates how relevant and important Quintura considers the word or phrase. If one or these terms will add accuracy to your search, you click it. You then watch as it floats towards the center of the cloud to join your query.

What’s included in the new version of Quintura?

The new Quintura
Quintura’s new search interface includes a preset search cloud which gives easy access to popular searches.

The search cloud used to be placed in the top half of the screen with the search results below. This made for a lot of scrolling, so it is a considerable improvement that the cloud is now to the left with the search results to the right.

Quintura now displays graphical images (favorite icons or favicons) next to some of the search terms in the cloud. The icon is associated with a URL that corresponds to a search term. By clicking the icon users can visit web pages right from the cloud.

It is unclear, however, how these URLs are chosen, so I think this new feature is mostly confusing.

Yakov Sadchikov has plans for these images, though: “In the near future, Internet advertisers will be able to utilize icons and other graphics in the Quintura cloud for their contextual advertising campaigns.â€?

I hope they plan on marking these ads clearly. Otherwise, this will this add to the confusion.

Have a look at our review from when Quintura first launched the online version of their search engine back in November of 2006.

Got little ones? Read about Quintura for Kids .