Carrot2 is a research framework for experimenting with automated querying of various data sources (such as search engines), processing search results and their visualization.

Under the term “research”, we understand that the architecture of the system is oriented mostly toward flexibility, sometimes at a price of performance losses. Mechanisms such as data exchange via XML language, dynamically loaded components accessible via HTTP protocol, the use of Java as primary language of implementation — they all make the system very easy to tailor to one’s needs. Carrot2 was primarily built with search results clustering in mind, but it can be easily configured to do other, interesting things.

Tags: clustering, information retrieval, machine learning, search engine