search engine named Cuil. The article suggested that Cuil has been
designed to go head to head with Google. It supposed strength is the
number of pages that it indexes, a number it claims is larger than the
number indexed by Google. Unfortunately, the few searches that I
performed all worked better in Google. Not only did Cuil fail to
return results for certain terms when results were retrieved the
ranking system didn't particularly work for me.
The layout of the results is another problem. While it is trying to
be innovative, Cuil's non-standard approach to the organization or
search results is actually more difficult to navigate and scan
quickly. Instead of arranging the results vertically, allowing on to
scan the page in a straight line, Cuil users need to zig-zag back and
forth across the Cuil results page in a fashion similar to that of
scanning the pages of a dictionary. Furthermore, the non-linear
presentation doesn't make it particularly clear which results are to
be the most highly ranked (does one read it like a dictionary or a
catalogue). Sadly the only visual modification that the site allows
is for the user to choose whether they want the results displayed in
two or three columns.
Another particularly noticeable omission is that Cuil doesn't offer
advanced searching or searching hints. While I presume that Cuil does
have some operators (at least 'and,' 'or,' and 'not') these aren't
explained or apparent. Furthermore, Cuil doesn't seem to provide a
stable help section. Of the two or three times that I have tried to
access this content I was only successful once.
While some of these things may be worked out as the service ages and
the designers get a better sense of what users want, I am not sure
that I am presently inclined to recommend Cuil's use (a further
inducement for me to not recommend its use is that it doesn't fully
index this blog, though it has been getting better as the day has been
progressing).
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