Found amongst the radio web chatter this week is a brand spankin’ new search engine called Cuil. First impression, Cuil name- oh it’s pronounced “cool”? Not cuite as Cuil… Ok, I can sense your frustration already so I’ll stop.
Stumbling upon the new search engine created by ex-Googler Anna Patterson and gang (Tom Costello, and two other former Google engineers — Russell Power and Louis Monier), I was initially impressed with the trendy new design of the homepage, as many others were. Only having heard about Cuil being the new “Google Killer,” it’s amazing number of indexed pages, and it’s new search algorithm returning only the most relevant of relevant data, I decided to typed in a querry. Low and behold, This returned 0 results. Again, I try with a new querry, same result. The thrid try did end up bringing me something… I suppose Cuil needs to get to know you before it starts working for you.
Ok, enough unobjective banter. I think there must be a good set of criteria that a search engine must meet in this day and age and here they are:
I. Functional Design
Cuil does deliver us a pseudo unique design utilizing block listings in a 3-column layout. Whether this is easier to navigate than a list is up to the user I suppose. For me however, it makes it harder to understand which listing is in the number 2 spot. Most users (at least Western users) will attribute the number 1 ranking to the listing at the top-left. Where to from there? You pick, to the right? Next one down?
I will venture to guess that the #2 listing is the next one down (I would be wrong). This is all fine and dandy, but if you notice there is something wrong now. Most users won’t have a predominantly vertical monitor resolution, especially with widescreen aspect ratios becomming ever so popular. So what happens to the #4 listing? It’s off the screen, making the fifth most relevant search list visually appear more prominant than the fourth.
One of the nice features, and one of the only unique features of Cuil is its categorization feature. Cuil finds ‘relevant’ data schemes within it’s indexed pages and places them in a cute little box, or tabs across the top of the page for your viewing pleasure. I have yet to find any information in the categories that I could find useful to my search, but I’m sure someone has. Or why would they have put it there?
I will give it credit I have always thought an OS should organize information in schemata so that automatic thought could make the organization of files and system operation could be more efficient. Although this categorization isn’t quite the same thing, it is a step in the right direction.
EDIT: After playing around with the site’s features, I was able to come to the conclusion that the list does run from left to right and not vertically. The fact remains that this simple aspect should be immediately recognizable to a new viewer. The color scheme is nice though…
II. Serve Multiple Media Types
This is one place where I initially thought Cuil was ahead of the curve. Sadly, despite me best efforts, I could not find the images displayed next to the listings on nearly any of the domains, let alone page the listing represented. Not only is this an essentially useless feature as it stands, it’s horribly misleading! An image in this location can completely set the tone for a listing and drive users away, or bring them in for the wrong reasons (might be NSFW).
Aside from displaying an image next to listings Cuil deems relevant, there seem to be no other media offerings. Considering Google Image Search has been in existence for several years and lawsuits at this point, it would seem like Cuil would be able to serve up something to that effect.
III. Strong Search Relevancy (in quantity and quality)
The heart of a search engine, the entire meaning of the industry… yes Cuil says it has over 120 billion pages indexed, but how do we get to see them? I suppose only time and overall usage will tell whether Cuil has a great algorithm behind it. However, in its infantile stages, Cuil seems to be a biased beast. In this article Dvorak mentions his queries came back a bit skewed. Queries for Google founder, Sergey Brin, returned minuscule and ancient results compared to millions of results in Google, and MSN for the same search. In contrast, Dvorak’s queries for Anne Patterson came back with more results and “the top search hit is her glowing bio on the Cuil site itself,” according to Dvorak.
I suppose we can rule out unbiased quality at this point.
As for a nice, big, juicy pile of results to sift through at your whim, my experience so far has been a smaller, not so relevant, and sometimes empty search results. Let’s hope this is just some first round jitters and not a glimpse of the future’s overly strict, unsatisfying queries to come.
IV. Integration With RIAs (Mail clients, RSS readers, etc.)
This category might seem like a bit of a witch hunt for Cuil, but I would have expected this self-proclaimed Google killer to have some sort of mail client, or product search, or anything outside the realm of web searches. From what I have found, nothing yet. I know Google and Yahoo! have been in the biz way longer, and have had time to develop RIAs that link up with their online document index. Really though, today’s internet environment, Web 2.0, it’s all about integration and the idea of “what else can you do for me?” Right now, Cuil is not doing much else.
V. Personalization
iGoogle, My Yahoo!, Ask.com’s My Stuff and personalized search backgrounds, MSN Live, all the major players, not just Google have personalized home page options. You can search in different languages in most. The user can even select results to come back in Pig Latin or L33t speak at Google. Cuil attempts to allow users to personalize their Cuil settings by choosing 2 or 3 columns of results, turn on and off safe search, and turn on or off typing suggestions- a feature that browsers have been offering for years now based on your history, or other search engines have been offering dynamic text suggestions since at least 2006.
Where is my RSS feed with all my personal interests laid out before me? And what about my flickr feed that inspires me sometimes even before my morning coffee? Or how about something useful like weather, stock prices, maps… anything? I’m not sure how Cuil decided it was going to challenge the giant without any of these peripheral pleasures and personal electronic effects.
It will take more than that to take Google’s cozy spot as my browser’s homepage.
VI. Multicultural/Multilingual
Granted, it’s difficult to meet the expectations of millions of users worldwide. Everyone has their own beliefs, cultures, and standards when it comes to everything under the sun. And it’s not to say that every other search engine, or even the internet itself is great at meeting the cultural expectations of Russia, or the ROC when it comes to serving up relevant web content, but at least the current big players offer other results in other languages and TLDs.
At the very least, all the current major search engines offer results displayed in an obvious hierarchy, no matter what culture you come from (unless your culture reads from the bottom up). Cuil claims that columns are an easier format for users to read. While they may be speaking true for western countries, will users from east Asia (who read vertically from right to left) find the column format more helpful than a single top-down list? I dare say no. This single usability aspect ruins the point of the columnar design. I will boldly guess that the column design was deliberately designed to differentiate Cuil from other search engines by design alone, and this decision was justified by comparing it to newspapers and Bibles (check it out, FAQ #8).
Maybe there will be more to come, and probably so as is the evolutionary cycle of any technology. At this point though, one can’t simply recreate the wheel without creating the whole bicycle to propel it. Users expect more out of their web experience, and the most you will fine at Cuil is a cute new layout with a marginally relevant category drilldown.
