A Cuil Search Engine is Born - Tabs and Suggestions
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These aren't the only ways that Cuil organizes your information for you. When you first do a search, as you're typing the words in, Cuil gives you a drop-down list of suggestions. It's similar in some ways to Yahoo Search Assist, but less sophisticated. Here's a screen shot.
That box to the left of the top suggestion really should contain an icon in the shape of the site's logo. Anyway, if I had clicked on that top item in the drop-down list (Washington Mutual) I would have been taken directly to that web site. Clicking on any of the other items in the drop-down list causes Cuil to perform a search using that term.
After you do a search, Cuil will sometimes include tabs in the gray bar above the search results. These give you more options, more ways to organize your search and focus more tightly on what you're seeking. Here's a screen shot from a search for apple (which doesn't even offer the fruit):
Clicking on the “more” tab delivers a drop-down list similar to the one Cuil uses to make suggestions when you start your search, while clicking on the other tabs causes Cuil to perform new searches using that term.
All told, this is a very nice interface, and it's very smoothly executed. In the time I've spent reviewing new search engines, I've seen a lot of different interfaces. Some were good, and some were truly awful. This one is both easy on the eyes and seemingly more informative than Google's standard ten-blue-links-in-a-list. It actually feels more natural than the standard search interface, which is quite an achievement.
Next: Relevance Matters >>
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