Find related websites or websites related to specific topics

Posted on October 11, 2008 at 5:33 am

Searching for career related websites? Or computer related websites? Or maybe education related websites? How about finding new sites related to games, science, or children? Everyone know who the big players are out there, but what about all of those smaller sites with valuable information also!?

Well it’s pretty tough to find websites that are related to each other right now other than simply performing a Google search for the topic you are interested in. However, there is one problem with this approach and that’s the fact that the sites that show up are being ranked by Google.

Many websites have lots of useful information, but never end up reaching the first page of Google search results. That’s where there are some free online tools you can use to find topic related websites using a different algorithm that may give different results.

Wectar tries to help you sort through the vast amount of information online using a fusion of two popular worlds, namely DMOZ (Open Directory Project) and del.icio.us. DMOZ is an online directory that is very hard to get listed on, so almost all sites are of high quality and have been around for a while.

Del.icio.us is the popular bookmarking service where people can save their favorite sites. Joining the two together along with a meta search to find related websites gives you websites that are not only popular, but also have something in common.

For example, type in a URL, such as Last.fm and click the Find Related button.

You’ll now get a list of websites that are related to Last.fm, listed in order of the number of saves they have on Del.icio.us. In this case, SomaFM, Sky.FM, Yahoo Music, Mike’s Radio World, Stickam, etc show up in the list.

Pretty sweet eh? As you go down the list, you’ll notice the number of times that page has been saved on del.icio.us declines. Wectar also picks up the description from DMOZ, the website title, the page description, and the top tags for the site.

Under related, you will also see an option called Browse related web sites (alpha). Click on that and you will get a visual interactive diagram to browse the various related websites.

As you move your mouse over the websites, you’ll get a preview of the site along with a description. You can double click to open the site in a new window. You can single click on any site to make it the new center of the diagram.

You can also install their bookmarklet by dragging the button to the Firefox or IE toolbar. You can then click this button while you are on any site and see a list of related websites. Neat!

Overall, Wectar is pretty neat for finding other websites related to your current favorites. Give it a shot and see if you find something interesting! Enjoy!

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