Quintura, a search engine that uses graphics to pinpoint tags, has raised “several million dollars” in a first round funding entirely from Mangrove Capital Partners. The Moscow-based company plans to start an affiliate program and add tags associated with its search system, Pandia reported. When using Quintura to conduct a search, a browser window is opened with a tag cloud of terms. The search term is at the center of the cloud surrounded by related terms that can help you narrow down the query. The font size of the tags shows how relevant and important Quintura considers the word or phrase. The company will use the funding to further develop its system.

Red Herring: The keyword cloud is intended to speed up searches. Quintura displays web links from Yahoo, though it appears the company can also use Google, MSN, or Technorati results. Quintura also has an image search and a video search provided by startup Blinkx.