The most notable difference becomes apparent on the start page of Powerset. Here it is not only possible to enter specific keywords like Google Chrome or Microsoft but also questions like “what did Benjamin Franklin invent” or phrases like “impressionist painters”. Wikipedia will return a list of possible results for those queries leaving the user with the task to look through them to find the article containing the right information.

The results pages that Powerset generates are also distinctively different from Wikipedia pages.Take Caffeine for an example. Wikipedia displays one extensive article about Caffeine that is divided into subsections.

Powerset on the other hand begins by displaying the most relevant information about Caffeine (and possible related meanings) at the top. Even more interesting than that is the so called Factz section which are information compiled from various Wikipedia articles. These factz are made up of the subject, a relation and an object and are listed in rows. For Caffeine its Caffeine (subject) Increases (relation) production effectiveness .. (object) in the first row and Caffeine Causes anxiety .. in the second with a total of 183 rows that can be displayed.

These sets can be selected for detailed information about the specific set by displaying relevant Wikipedia articles and information. Take a look at the demonstration video below for additional information:

Interested users can visit the Powerset website to test the services.

The entry PHP will for instance display part of the Wikipedia article on the top of the results. A Youtube video will be shown on the right with the option to browse through all Youtube videos that are related to the search term.

Below that is probably the most interesting part of Visual Wikipedia: Related Terms. Related terms are terms that are related to the entered search term. They are shown as a tag cloud and mindmap. A click on a tag or an entry in the mindmap will load search for that term on Visual Wikipedia.

A box will all outgoing links of the Wikipedia article, recommended articles and links to different language versions is shown on the very same page as well.

Links to various external search engines are available at the bottom of the page. This includes links to Youtube, Wikipedia, Google or Flickr among others.

The main benefit of using Visual Wikipedia as opposed to the normal Wikipedia website is the additional display of information on the result pages.