The problem is…

I don’t think they were really ready to go. I tried out some searches when they first launched and got overly confused when all the SERPS had the same photos of unrealted people and random objects. Each page I clicked on came up with the same photos. It took me a few seconds to figure out the links next to the photos were actually different than the previous page. What’s up with that?

I’ve gone back today, however, and it appears Cuil.com has tweaked their search results. (For instance seobook.com comes now if you search for SEO).  But things still aren’t quite right. A search for Zebra comes up with some strange results (2,268 to be exact, compared to 57,100,000 Google results). Nothing on the main results page is related to the animal. A second click is needed to get to any results about actual Zebra. Aparently Zebra printers are more relevant than Zebra animals. Should I be ashamed I’ve never heard of them?

I’m also thrown off by the fact that there sometimes appears to be a bar at the top of the page and a box to the right with more possible results. The box on the right is marked “Explore by Category”.Except in my Zebra example, the categories don’t appear to coincide with the main results page. The main results page is technology oriented. The Explore by Category box has links to Zebras, National Parks of South Africa, Fauna of Nambia, Fauna of Angoloa, and “Automatic Identification and Data Capture”

The top bar references “Zebra Printers”. “Zebra Technologies”. “Zebra Print”, “More”

If I try to find a “how to use” guide for their search results, I may find out the difference between the top bar and the “Explore by Category” box. But if you ask me, the UI should be more straight forward. I don’t want to read a manual to decipher the results.

The other engines just give you a list. It’s pretty easy to weed through the results, but can be a pain if 5 out of 10 results aren’t relevant to what you’re looking for.

My suggestion to Cuil…

Would be to make the results immediately understandable. For instance, there’s room currently for 3 columns. Why not make each column the most relevant categories, with a “more” option, or other categories available in the top bar. Then some one can scroll through the results in the column that they are most interested in.

I would seriously work on making the photos more relevant, too.

Anyway, they should have done a bit more beta testing before launching to the world. You only get to make a first impression once. Let’s see what they do to bounce back.

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This is a huge deal from an SEO and design standpoint. Flash has been conscidered “Accessible” by screen readers for some time now (starting with the release of Flash Player 6 in 2002), but the serch engines have been slow to develop a way to search and index flash content (don’t ask me why).  This is one of the major factors keeping Flash from completely taking over the web (that, and the fact that Flash is not very intuitive).

If you had a website that was 100% flash, chances are people wouldn’t be finding you through a web search. This is OK if you have the $$ to back it up with a media blitz, but terrible if you depend on organic/natural traffic.

Flash still can be a bit trickey if the whole site is in one file, because Google still doesn’t have a way to link directly to a relevent page (as far as I can tell). But if the site is HTML with Flash embeleshments, or entirely flash, but with seperate html files for each embeded page, then the results Google gives us will be more accurate.

From a fontahollic standpoint this anoncement from Adobe is cool because designers can now use flash to embed sections of accessible fancy text (like headlines,etc) that will appear the same on all computers with the Flash plugin (98% of computers on internet), and wont sacrifice their Search Engine Friendlienes (SEF).

This has been able to be done for a few years now using a sneaky, and surprisingly not very widely used method (correct me if I’m wrong) called sIFR, which uses Flash, JavaScript and CSS all mashed up together with a pinch of Oregano and a sprig of mint. Needless to say, just making a little Flash file and dropping it in will be nice.

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