For a long time now, I’ve been fed up with the search function on Wikipedia. It isn’t very good for finding a variety of information that is relevant to your query, and it also doesn’t search for similar spellings of queries when/if you spell something wrong.

There have been search engines dedicated to searching Wikipedia in the past, but they have gone offline, leaving Wikipedia pretty much alone again, until now.

Powerset comes onto the scene with greatly enhanced searching capability for Wikipedia content. The site is incredibly slick and innovative, allowing you to view results in several different ways.

A search results page will show items as drop-down menus that once pushed, will expand into a mini-view format so you can skim the result before you actually head to the full article (think about it as a more in-depth “preview”). If you click on a search result link, the Wikipedia article opens in Powerset with a handy right-side menu to navigate the sections. The right-side menu features a switch that enables you to see the outline of the Wikipedia article or some “Factz” which are automatically gathered phrases that the search engine attempts to put together (most of them are pretty accurate, but it depends on what you searched for).

On top of all of this, Powerset allows you to be a regular human being while you make a search. You don’t have to phrase your Wikipedia queries on keywords or even short phrases. Ask Powerset a question or type in a statement and Powerset will bring up the relevant Wikipedia articles.

Powerset is certainly worth bookmarking if you use Wikipedia often.

Powerset Demo Video from officialpowerset on Vimeo.