[Web4lib] CUIL doesn't seem very COOL

[John Goldsmith]

Hi Dan,

I share your sentiment.  I did a couple of simple searches as well, on  
topics like "salmon", "AIDS", "Greece", etc.  and was underwhelmed  
with the results.  For a search engine that claims to index twice the  
number of pages as Google, the search results were not as good, IMHO.   
In fact Google found more pages then CUIL on the same search terms,  
despite CUIL's  fancy new indexing system.

While I have not spent that much time using it, I have a sense that  
CUIL may be twice as big as Goolge because it indexes more business  
and commercial related pages.

I was also disappointed that there is no "advanced search page" or  
instructions on how to construct a search string.  Does CUIL allow "+"  
and "-" characters? Does it allow boolean searches or searches limited  
by language, etc. ? If this information is available on the CUIL site  
then it's not in an obvious place.

Finally, I can't say as I like the way the search results are  
displayed.  Perhaps it's just an "old dog - new tricks" thing. Even  
though CUIL does display a little more information about each site  
then Google, I just don't like the way the results are presented  
across the page in a 2 or 3 column layout.  Now, if CUIL had really  
wanted to kick it up a notch, they should have displayed their search  
results in the same way as another new search engine - SearchMe (http://www.searchme.com 
). Now that really is cool.

Cheers.


John Goldsmith
Fraser Valley Distance Education School
49520 Prairie Central Road,
Chilliwack, B.C.  V2P 6H3
Tel: (604) 794-7310, Loc 2459
Fax: (604) 795-8480
Email: goldsmith at rainbow.fvrcs.gov.bc.ca
Blog: http://www.detools.ca





On 28-Jul-08, at 10:19 AM, Dan Lester wrote:

> http://www.reportonbusiness.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080727.wcuil0728/BNStory/Business/?cid=al_gam_nletter_dtechal
>
>
> Has anyone else played with www.cuil.com?   (pronounced like cool)
>
> Supposedly more pages indexed, better, etc.  Doing a little vanity
> searching, I searched
>
> dan lester boise
>
> and found lots of stuff....well, some....almost all of it from old
> newsgroup postings from 93 and 94.  Well, I guess that's a rich
> source of fodder to build stuff up, but hardly exciting or
> convincing.
>
> searching for
>
> barack obama
>
> produced    "We didn’t find any results for “barack obama”"
>
> but searching obama as a single word did.
>
> For my entries there were a bunch of images, all completely
> irrelevant and nothing that was on any of my pages, or places where I
> was mentioned.
>
> Obama's images were, for the most part, relevant.
>
> Comments, thoughts, experiences?
>
> dan
>
> -- 
> The road goes on forever and the party never ends. REK, Jr.
> Dan Lester, Boise, ID
>
>
>
>
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