Today there is yet another small startup search engine that enters the fray against incumbent Google, but the team that launched it are no beginners.
In fact, according to CNN Money, Anna Patterson, one of the site's creators, contributed to Google search engine with a previous invention and worked there for a time, as did some of the other team members.
But her new search engine, called Cuil (pronounced Cool), an old Irish word for knowledge, is said to index three times as many pages as Google with less computer power.
It also has a simple interface that once you have entered your search terms shows a cool results page in magazine style. The default is three column, but you can change it to 2 columns a the bottom. As in Google, you get about 10 results but can get as many as 12.
The search engine suggests categories, and if your search could be a number of things, it also suggests contextual suggestions in tab format.
The example they give is jaguar, it could be an animal, a car or a number of other things.
The site also has set to default in the preferences to filter out pornography and to make typing suggestions. Moreover, for privacy freaks, the site promises not to
One big drawback of the search site is that you have no idea how important the links it serves to you are. Here would be my wishlist for the site:
- Have a sort function by relevance and date
- Include the ability to subscribe to an RSS feed of your results. For those of us that use search for business purposes, to keep track of brand identity, this is essential
I haven't attempted any real research at the site since it just launched today, but with its comprehensive indexing, I plan to make it a stop on my list of places to go.
Does anyone else have any thoughts or inside insight about Cuil? I would love to hear it in the comments.
