Cuil Blog

Although we’re based in the US, Cuil has a relatively large following of users from other parts of the world. Some of these countries don’t have the luxury of high-speed broadband internet connections, and to to help them get easier access to information, we’ve launched a new preference to put the site into Low Bandwidth mode. Of course, people with less-speedy connections in the US are more than welcome to use it as well!

When in Low Bandwidth mode, the Cuil search results page loses some of its interesting sidebar information for the sake of speed. The images associated with results are removed, and results are reformatted into a single column. While this means a far less interactive experience, page loads become tiny and fast for slow connections. To turn on Low Bandwidth mode, just toggle the option from the Preferences page (which is also now conveniently linked to from the Cuil homepage).

As a reminder, we also have a version of Cuil optimized for mobile devices. You can access the mobile version by simply going to http://www.cuil.com on your Apple iPhone, Palm Pre, or any Android device like the T-Mobile G1.

A lot of users have written to us asking how to make Cuil the default search engine in Safari. Our response up to now has been that it simply isn’t possible. Apple restricts Safari’s search to Google only, and there is no way to change this in Safari’s preferences. However, there is another method out there that works quite well, but it involves installing a Safari plugin. In the past, we have shied away from recommending this due to the involved installation process.

Our users have spoken loudly though, and there are now better plugins available than when we first surveyed the issue. In this post I will guide you through the task of installing Glims, a great Safari plugin, and configuring it to search Cuil. It’s not that painful. I promise!

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In case you haven’t noticed, Cuil is now available in seven languages, including French, Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese and Turkish. If you’re interested in translating Cuil into any other language, please let us know. As always, we welcome your feedback.

Haben sie das gesehen? Cuil ist jetzt in sieben Sprachen, eingeschlossen Französisch, Spanisch, Italiener, Deutsch, Portugiesisch und Türkisch. Als allemal, wir Willkommen ihrer Rückkopplung.

Cuil ya está disponible en siete idiomas, incluyendo Francés, Español, Italiano, Alemán, Portugués, y Turco. Como siempre, agradecemos sus comentarios.

Au cas ou vous n’auriez pas remarqué, Cuil existe maintenant en sept langages: anglais, français, espagnol, italien, allemand, portuguais et turc. Comme toujours, n’hesitez pas à nous faire part de vos commentaires.

Se non hai notato, Cuil è ora disponibile in sette lingue, inglese, italiano, francese, spagnolo, tedesco, turco e portoghese. Come sempre, vogliamo i vostri suggerimenti!

Caso você não tenha reparado, Cuil está agora disponível em sete idiomas, inglês, português, francês, espanhol, italiano, alemão e turco. Como sempre, apreciamos as suas sugestões!

Cuil’da artık Fransızca, İspanyolca, İtalyanca, Almanca, Portekizce veya Türkçe arama yapabilirsiniz. Her zamanki gibi, yorumlarınızı bekliyoruz!

When you see the right image, you know it instantly. And if it’s not quite right, you know it right away, too. We’ve gotten lots of feedback on our image work since launch and we really appreciate the input and ideas. We’ve looked, listened and learned, and have made some changes. Today we are rolling out some more changes to our image algorithm that address some of these issues. We hope to find more photos and less title bars, for example. And we have to be able to find more good images from the results themselves.

Please let us know what you think. We still have more work to do. Hard problems don’t get solved all at once.

Happy searching.

Let’s face it: the internet is a great resource full of information about anything you could imagine, but it can be extremely difficult to sift through lots of pages to find exactly what you need. Search results traditionally have been about giving you a list of relevant pages to explore based on your query, but today Cuil is launching a new way to visualize the information we’ve compiled about your query — timelines.

Augmenting our current functionality like maps, our timelines will appear on the far right of the page when you search for something that has a range of dates associated with it. Try it now — search for Abraham Lincoln and check out the timeline of events related to this great leader, or try Alan Turing for the history of the person who made a lot of this possible. We make it easy to explore the events in the timeline, just move your mouse over an event and a pop-up will appear with a longer description and a link to search for related pages.

Beyond people, timelines can be a useful tool for displaying information about a period in history, such as the Great Depression. Or a famous sports arena, like Madison Square Garden. Or, say, the highest bridge in the world, the Millau Viaduct.

This is the first of many experiments we’re doing to help users to find and explore information in a more visual way, breaking free of the old status quo that search results should just be a list of web pages. Of course, this is our first iteration of timelines, so please let us know your feedback.