Cuil: Why Scrolling Divs? Why Columns?

So….. some ex-Google engineers have launched their own search engine: Cuil (pronounced “Cool”).

They claim that its index is 3 times the size of Google’s. Great!

They say it focuses on on-page content for relevancy. Great!

I would love to see a good solid competitor for Google. I would love to see a search engine that focuses more on on-page content and less on backlinks.

I ran a few searches on Cuil. The results were nothing to write home about. Some key search terms brought up zero results. Other searches brought up tons of spam. Some searches brought up reasonably relevant results. But the search results were inferior — vastly inferior — compared to Google. Cuil’s index can’t possibly be big as they claim, and it’s obvious the algorithm needs polishing. But that’s okay; I would expect a brand-new search engine to need fine-tuning.

I like the thumbnail image that Cuil displays with each result, too. Well, I would, except that the images seem to have no relationship whatsoever to the search results. What on earth are they doing, showing random, unrelated images as thumbnails next to search results?

But why oh why is Cuil using a scrolling div to display search results? I have my default text size in Firefox set big enough that the entire search result set doesn’t fit on my screen, and the scrolling div means that after I perform a search I then have to click with my mouse inside the scrolling div area before I can scroll.

And, in case it’s not bad enough that Cuil is using the scrolling div, they’re also displaying the search resuls in columns.

Why oh why is Cuil using columns? I have a choice to use two columns or three, but honestly, there’s nothing wrong with a single column. I hate hate hate scrolling down then up then down then up then down then up. A single column doesn’t force all that up-and-down — I can just scroll down through the results until I find what I’m looking for. But two or three colums forces two or three down-and-ups. It gets more annoying each time.

In Google, I have my options set to display 100 results at a time. Cuil doesn’t offer this option. They may in the future — but imagine scrolling down through 33 results, then back up all that way to the top of the second column, then down through another 33 results, then all that way to the top of the third column, then down again. Egads! This is not user friendly.

I wish Cuil the best of luck. Google has far too much power in the world of search. But for now I won’t be using it.