Zing Blog by ZingWiz

Ok, so Cuil.com has been live for about two weeks now. I like the idea of it, a search engine that is less about popularity, and more about relevancy and organized results. Sounds great. They claim to index around 121,617,892,992 pages (as of this posting). That’s a pretty good amount. I’ve heard some really round number estimates on the amount of websites on the internet, anywhere from 4-11 billion (and counting). That’s an average of 11-30 pages per site (anyone know how many pages the average site has??) Either way, this seems like they are looking at a good chunk of the web.

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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