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.

In a Dreamweaver newsgroup that I read regularly, the following question is asked and answered almost daily:

“How do I remove the ugly blue border from around all my linked images?”

The answer is, put this in your style sheet:

a img {   border: 0;}

Daily newspapers have been fighting decreasing readership and falling subscriptions for at least a couple of decades now. More and more, newspapers are putting their content online.

For that I salute them.

But the web is now about 15 years old, and I wonder why so many newspapers still don’t manage to get some of the basic things right.

This morning I was reading an article about a replicate of the Nina coming to town. The article is in this morning’s edition (Wednesday, March 12) but under the headline there’s a line that says “Last updated March 11.” This suggests the article was first written and published sometime prior to March 11.

So when the article says the Nina is coming to town Monday, does it mean Monday two days ago, or Monday of next week, or some other Monday?

Google thinks that searching for web pages with the word “design” in the title means you have a virus

There are some “advanced” Google searches that web developers and search engine experts often use to get a better picture of the true competition for various keywords. One of these is using intitle: to find out how many web pages are targeting a particular word or phrase in the title of the page. The syntax is intitle:keyword or intitle:”keyword phrase”.

Google apparently thinks that anyone who includes the word “design” in such a search is infested with a virus or other malware.

Go ahead and try it. Go to Google and type intitle:”website design” into the search box. Or intitle:”interior design” or intitle:”fashion design.” Bet you get a warning message from Google about having a virus or spyware.

Now try those searches with a different word instead of design. Search for intitle:”website developer” or intitle:”interior decor” or intitle:”fashion clothing.” No problem, you get regular search results of all the pages Google knows about that contain those phrases in the page title.

WTF? “Design” is a virus word? If anyone wonders why search results in Google can be so screwy sometimes, I shall point them to this post.