Although the Cuil team is small, we’re constantly rolling out new features and making existing ones better. Many ideas come from our users’ feedback. Occasionally we get requests for “power features” — shortcuts and refinements that make searching that much easier for frequent users. Here’s a roundup of several such “hidden” features you may not know about that will help you search faster and more accurately.
Paging
You asked for it and we listened. It is now possible to page forward and backward through the search results using your left and right arrow keys. Hit the right arrow key to go to the next page and the left arrow key to go back. You can also use the up and down arrow keys to scroll the search results. This makes scanning the results page super quick.
Suggestions
“Search Suggestions” can get you to your destination without having to type the whole query. Just start typing into the search field and a list will popup with possible queries. If you’ve used this feature before, you may know that you can use the arrow keys to move up and down the list, and the enter key will search using the highlighted item. What you probably don’t know is that if you hit the right arrow key instead of enter, the currently selected item will be put into the search box but the query won’t be run yet. This lets you modify the suggestion or build the query “piecemeal” from the suggestion list.
For example, let’s say you want to search for “Green Day Lyrics.” You could just type in the whole term and click “Search,” but using the tip from above you could type in “green” then down-arrow twice, right-arrow, down-arrow, enter. This will do the same search, but much quicker than using the mouse and easier than typing the whole query. Give it a try.
Categories
For many search terms a list of categories appears on the right side of the results. If you search for “BMW” for example, you get categories such as “BMW Motorcycles” and “Luxury Vehicles.” If you hover over one of these, it will open, revealing links to additional searches. This can help you refine your query by searching for the new term along with the original one (the technical term for this is “intersection”). Clicking “Jaguar XJ” for example, will run a search for “BMW Jaguar XJ.”
However, there are times when you want to search just the new term (not an intersection). Maybe the two terms together are too specific, or you want to go in a different direction. You can do this by holding the Alt key (Option on a Mac) and clicking one of the links. Instead of searching for “BMW Jaguar XJ,” from the previous example, it will search for just “Jaguar XJ.” Pretty nifty.
Try out these tips and let us know what you think. We’re always listening to our users and these features were a direct result of your feedback. Keep your suggestions coming and we’ll keep incorporating them into Cuil.
Joel · Sep 30, 08:54 AM
Wow. These are great. The keyboard arrow-key navigation adds a lot. Great work!
Flip · Oct 1, 06:12 AM
Search suggestions rock. Makes our day more effective! τhαṉќṡ!
Andy · Oct 1, 03:12 PM
Nice features. How about the features like popgist.com? It would be nice to get it before it gets big:)
Josh · Oct 3, 07:23 PM
Really digging the search suggestions.
MeMe · Oct 4, 09:11 PM
Just in for some comments.
So – I like the idea behind Cuil.
But I don´t really like what it offers me.
There are several IMPORTANT features that I am missing.
Plus some minor.
I will only name one – the most important for me:
A few minutes ago I had wanted to start a search for results that fall in a certain frame of time. E.g. “from the last week”.
But I can´t do that.
Cuil doesn´t offer me any modifications to my search.
No need to list all the things missing here – you know what I mean.
All the options available in all of the other search engines known to me are missing here – except from “safe search” and “typing suggestions”.
This makes Cuil totaly unsuited (put mildly…) for quite a few “types” of search.
The effect is me knowing not to be able to count on Cuil for more than a very basic search.
I really really would appreciate it, if those features would be added soon…
Shekhar · Oct 5, 01:40 AM
Could not get the Categories shortcut working in Linux (Fedora 9, Firefox 3.0.2). Once I hold the ALT key, I’m not able to click on the category links. This is because I’m using GNOME and in GNOME CTRL+Click moves a window.
The way out would be to change the key combo in GNOME. Else, perhaps, CUIL can make the key combination configurable via its preferences.
Besides this, I have written more about Cuil here when it was launched.
Joseph · Oct 5, 06:53 AM
this is just awesome.
However, most users don’t know that they can use arrows. on the search page it will be helpful to mention that this feature exist. it saves lot of time. Or even add a link to the blog for users to know that a blog exists and see the latest posts.
Do you have any plan to have some sort of open source features where users can make their contribution to the site ?
For example, if some people want a news section…etc the community can help with the coding.Heston · Oct 6, 12:29 PM
@Shekhar: Thanks for the observation. It appears that Firefox Linux does not properly pass the modifier key to the event handler. I’ll look into this, but since it’s likely a browser bug I can’t guarantee there will be a fix.
UPDATE: I re-read your comment and realized it was a GNOME issue. I will add making the modifier key a user preference to our list of requested UI improvements.
Shekhar · Oct 6, 02:31 PM
It is always thrilling to know that a vendor (or service provider) is attentive to customer’s (or user’s) feedback. Thanks indeed for your response.
One of the other points which I raised in my Blog is about Cuil being mobile friendly. I’m 100% sure that you are working towards it. Waiting eagerly for the mobile friendly release.
Also, I’m not able to find my Blog using the keyword “shekhar govindarajan blog”. As per my blog post, I was able to find it some time back but now it has disappeared.
And yes, I’m most interested in finding my blog @ Cuil :-) Let me (and everyone) know of any guidelines to achieve it.
hmdewalt · Oct 7, 02:51 PM
I like Cuil however, when users find the sites they are looking for the sites should open in another tab. Yes, I know that we can choose that option by right clicking on our mouse, however, some people do not know this and if they get many results for their search and want to get back to Cuil, they will have to click back.
I also think that the description of the sites in the results page is too lengthy. More search results could fit on one page.
Overall though, Cuil is awesome.
Becky · Oct 7, 06:09 PM
I noticed that you “robot” crawled my website http://www.LocalMommy.com so I did a search on your site to see where the site ranked. I was surprised to see it didn’t even show up. I got many irrelevant results. I think its great that your engine is set up to scour the WHOLE internet but so far on other searches that I have done the relativity is nill. I hope that you adjust your algorithms accordingly because I think most of us are ready for something new besides google, yahoo, and msn.
R/
localmommy
Ubiquit · Oct 7, 11:37 PM
First, let me say that ‘AWESOME’ is the word for Cuil’s search layout and suggestions features.
I’ve to agree with Shekar on the indexing feature… my blog ‘Ubiquitense’ does not get listed with a direct link, even though I’m getting visitors via Cuil search.
Secondly, since you’re differentiating yourself from Google, MSN and other search engines by providing a bigger description of the web page/result, I second hmdewalt on his suggestion that the left mouse click should open a new tab (in newer browsers) or a new window (on older browsers like IE 6).
Good luck Cuil!!
Aswin S · Oct 8, 01:36 AM
Thumbs up to Search suggestions .
Heston · Oct 8, 09:54 AM
@Becky: If Cuil just crawled your site, it could take several days (or longer) before it shows up in search results. This is because once your site has been crawled, it must go through several more processing steps before it appears in the search index. Check back soon.
@Ubiquit: Providing an option to open search results in a new window/tab is on our development list. In startups there is always more work than there are people to do it. We’ll get to implementing this eventually ;-)
Shekhar · Oct 8, 11:01 AM
I have a slightly different issue. My blog did show up (sometime back) with the same keywords “shekhar govindarajan blog” (without the quotes) on Cuil search results. But now it does not. What could be the reason for this ?
Now these keywords search, shows only one result which was an article written by me for a IT magazine (as I could guess from the result text). But the link itself is broken (404 error).
Heston · Oct 8, 02:40 PM
@Shekhar: I certainly see what you mean. Cuil is in the process of upgrading several different pieces of our search engine, and it seems that there have been a few little hiccups in the process. We’re working to smooth things out, at which point your domain should start appearing again for those search terms. Sorry about that.
Shekhar · Oct 9, 11:12 AM
Not a problem Heston. I believe the interesting technology gone behind Cuil is not simple and does require smoothing out – now and always.
So please take your time in the upgrade. I can wait for the best. :-)
Dragonwych · Oct 9, 02:55 PM
Cuil looks cool — but if I can’t be more specific about what I’m searching for, I have to crawl through dozens of irrelevant results looking for what I need. As the results seem to be in no order of relevancy, and do not recognize phrases as such, Cuil won’t work for my research needs. Yet.
I’m looking forward to an alternative to Google, which promotes itself and its advertisers so much in search results that it is careening toward uselessness.
Heston · Oct 9, 03:27 PM
@Dragonwych: Could you be a little more specific? Are there specific phrases or search terms you’ve tried that return less-than-ideal results? If you provide some specific searches, I can work with our engineering team to figure out what’s wrong. We’re constantly working to make Cuil better and this info would help a lot.
Shekhar · Oct 10, 12:07 PM
This is news. I never felt/heard/saw Google prompting sites due to advertisers. I’m curious to hear/see some examples.
On a different note. the + point (please correct me if I’m wrong) about Cuil is that it does not use something like pagerank to compute the relevance. I strongly feel that popular sites (which are linked to by other sites) may not have the most appropriate answers (to your search results).
So let the Web be open and people find their answers across unpopular sites. If I’m right about Cuil’s technology, it does the same. At times, we can learn from spam too because spam is also information! Let the user decide what is spam and what is not (independence).
Sameer · Oct 11, 08:51 PM
I not only found what I wanted, I also enjoyed searching with Cuil. This search engine is rocking
Carl · Oct 14, 11:44 AM
Just discovered you guys from muzique.com.
Consider me a relative tyro when it comes to Internet searches.
I did three random searches and got a lot of gibberish: pictures OK, URL’s OK, but the verbiage looked jumbled or poorly typed. Big turn-off.
I have a vague sense that tools exist for honing my searches; i.e., “+” and “-” to add or subtract. That (and my big brain) makes me a power user in relation to the average idiot, of whom so many surf the Net . . .
Could you add a FAQ to help us idiots to refine our searches?
Thanks and best wishes!
Heston · Oct 14, 01:23 PM
@Carl: We’re in the process of putting together a search help page that will explain Cuil’s search features. However, since Cuil is still very new, many of the conventions from other search engines are not present in Cuil just yet (+, -, AND, OR, site:, etc.). We’re working on it, though.