Like many of you, I’ve been reading about Cuil, the new search engine from some former Google employees. I tried a couple of searches, but so far I don’t see why I would use this much. I searched “academic librarian,” for example. Of the eleven hits on the first page, four were to this blog. It’s nice to know I have such “authority,” but I thought four was about three too many. Three of the four hits had pictures of people beside them. I have no idea who the people are, but they’re definitely not me. I also searched “bivens-tatum.” The hits are all relevant, and there’s a nice spread, but again the pictures have nothing to do with me. There’s a picture of some painting by the link to this blog, but this blog doesn’t have any images. Perhaps the image comes from somewhere on the Princeton server. If the top left hit is the most relevant, then apparently a Shakespeare authorship website I made in library school is the most relevant web page related to me. Maybe they know it’s the first web page I ever created, so it has a certain sentimental value.

The layout is presumably to prevent the need to scroll, but I would like an option in the preferences to have more hits on the first page. When I’m looking for information, I want more text, rather than a tastefully arranged page with images scattered across like knick-knacks. I might like the search results better if I wasn’t ego-cuiling, but I don’t think I’d like the layout.

Anyway, there’s my two cents.