What is the purpose of this site?

Omnipelagos.com searches for chains of relationships between any two arbitrary concepts. Each chain is displayed along with a short text fragment which provides context. It can be used for fact-finding, brainstorming, or just plain fun.

To search, just enter two different people, places, things, events, or concepts in the input boxes at the top of the page, and click the Search button. After a second or two, the server will display chains of relationships between the two concepts.

How big is the concept database?

The database contains over 500,000 entries. Pretty much any piece of common knowledge that can be characterized as a noun is available. This includes noteworthy people, places, objects, events, and concepts. The database and associated text come from the Wikipedia project.

How are the results ranked?

The results are ranked by a scoring system, which takes into account a number of things: total size of the path from start to finish, "popularity" of each concept, and other heuristics. Generally, the shortest paths are displayed first, but for efficiency's sake the first paths shown may not be the absolute best. The scoring system can be tweaked via the Options page.

Why are the results different when you swap the two inputs? Shouldn't they be the same, but reversed?

At the moment, the search engine is unidirectional. This means that a search proceeds forward to the concepts that it refers to in its article text, but not backward to the concepts that refer to it.

For instance, searching from "United States" to "J. Geils Band" returns no results. But performing the reverse search "J. Geils Band" to "United States" returns one result. The reason is that the J. Geils Band article refers to the United States (as a place where the band performed) but the United States article, being of much greater scope, does not refer to the J. Geils Band.

You may easily perform a reverse search by clicking the ">>" between the two input fields, then clicking the Search button.

Where does the name come from?

Loosely translated and Anglosized, omnipelagos is Greek for "all seas". This is a pun on archipelago, which is a geographic term for a chain of islands. We sometimes wish we had picked a name that was easier to spell, but there you go. We pronounce it "ahm-nee-pel-AHH-gos", but you can say it however you like.

How current is the database?

The latest version is from 11/04/2006. We use a special script to synchronize our database with the main Wikipedia database as often as updates become available.

Where can I give feedback?

Please send your comments (and bug reports) to comments YAT omnipelagos.com (replace "YAT" with "@").