July 30, 2008

Cuil's Query Suggestions

One of the few things that are interesting about Cuil, the search engine launched two days ago, is the query suggestions feature. Most search engines suggest queries using a list of popular searches, but Cuil didn't have this option. The site obtained the suggestions by compiling a list of n-grams from web pages. For example, if you type "web images", you'll get a lot of variations of Google's navigation bar. A Google search for "web images * * *" returns similar results.




A simple way to view just the suggestions is to use:
http://www.cuil.com/suggest?q=click here (replace "click here" with your search). You'll notice that the results are very different than the suggestions from Yahoo, Google or Ask.
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5 comments:

  1. Never SurrenderJuly 30, 2008 at 6:45 PM

    i sorta like the search engine, it has a unique look,
    juzten
    http://dailyfreesoftware.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousJuly 30, 2008 at 11:34 PM

    The unique look is interesting, however, I am not impressed with the functionality. I searched for "east coast beach vacation rentals" and it replied "no results" "shorten your search phrase" - are you kidding me!!!

    I was looking for Kay Vacation Rentals - it pops right up in Google, no problem. (Google Results 1 - 10 of about 257,000 for east coast beach vacation rentals. (0.22 seconds) )

    I am not sold on this one yet. Thanks for the info though.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousJuly 31, 2008 at 12:59 AM

    Actually, the look of cuil totally irritates me. I have tried their 2 column layout and their 3 column layout and found both very irritating.

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousJuly 31, 2008 at 9:30 AM

    3 column is nauseating at best. Peep this post about there lackluster launch http://daxbradysheehan.wordpress.com/2008/07/29/perfecting-the-opposite-of-cool-cuil/

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousDecember 4, 2008 at 6:35 PM

    I don't like its layout myself. I prefer linear layouts like that of http://find.com - simple and straightforward.

    ReplyDelete

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