There are plenty of news stories about this search engine, so I’m going to focus on a few key elements that I think are worth a look at:

1. More robust approach to relevancy

Unlike other major search engines that use quality and quantity of web links within content, Cuil actually drills down into the pages they link to and analyzes the content of that page for relevancy. Seems simple enough, and certainly a good idea to get past ridiculous SEO link tactics used these days. I appreciate this – its aggrevating reading a page with unnecessary links within a paragraph. I also suspect (although I haven’t verified) that if this is perfected it will easily contend the more traditional approach.

2. “Article”-based search results

Rather than a list of text-only links, photos and paragraph snippets of content are returned as part of the search results. When interacting with a search engine, most results returned do not contain enough information to qualify the result in the user’s mind. Cuil does a nicer job of this, although it does mean more reading for the user.

3. Dynamic Faceted Searching

Faceted searching is the concept of narrowing search results based on multiple “facets” or aspects of your search results. For instance, if I search for “Portland, Oregon”, a few facets that I could narrow my results by would include “Neighborhoods in Portland”, “Municipal Parks in Portland”, etc. Faceted searching has been around for a few years in mainstream merchandising websites, but its just appearing in search engines (Ask.com is using this in a more simplified form). This is probably the best part of this engine in my opinion. And even though it could still use some refinement, the first view of it is good.

4. Privacy

Cuil promises to not store search history by user, and believes that this will attract users to their search engine too. Although I appreciate this, I don’t think there will be many people coming to Cuil simply because of this.

So where is this thing going? Well with $33 million in VC, I think Cuil will be an interesting story to watch. But even if Anna says Cuil isn’t for sale, what’s the likelihood of it becoming mainstream? I do enjoy routing for the underdog, but in this space its hard to not be very doubtful.

If nothing else, its another clever idea to diversify the search landscape. And for that, I appreciate Anna’s concept and the $33 million backing her.

Its very similar online. Users do not come to a site and immediately complete the intended transaction right away, nor in the same prescribed manner each time. No, upon coming to your site they will interact in the manner they choose, not you. This is engagement. And as trust is built between person and brand, the interest (and hopefully engagement) increases.

I’m working with one of my clients to make a significant shift in their view and measurement of their online audience. Rather than just tracking the progress of a user coming to the site and proceeding through the prescribed checkout process, we are looking at how users choose to engage with their brand. They may look at one or multiple products. They may read more about how its made. They may share that information with others. They might interact with multiple forms of media that further highlight that product and its background. We hope they read customer reviews or even sign up for our email list, but that is really their choice. But in the end, its the user who chooses the path, process and how they eventually get to a point of trust and interest to purchase.

When a digital brand understands how users engage with them, they can learn to better communicate with them. Marketing in the digital space is not about bludgeoning a user over the head to buy, buy buy! Its an opportunity to converse, to dialog, to share, and to engage. And when we learn how users respond to that better, we too can learn how to better converse and engage.

Mo wrote a post about it on his travel blog…you can read it here. As Mo pointed out, the biggest difference of this site is the “web 2.0 inspired” approach, especially their navigation (which is based on tag clouds). Here’s a screenshot of the main navigation:

This is most interesting to me is that they do not “prescribe” a navigation path for users by determining the site’s architecture and navigation. Rather they rely on what they term as “editor’s picks” (content chosen by VisitFlorida) and what users search for on the website. And although there is general industry concern about the usability of tag clouds with consumers, the folks at VisitFlorida found through user testing that with some label changes and a very effective search interface, they actually respond very well to it.

The site features all of the things that a Web/Travel 2.0 site should have:

• User-submitted photos and videos
• User-submitted trips
• User Reviews
• 10 “Florida Experts” who are contributing content regularly for the website
• Content tagging

Its the content tagging that powers the site search, and ultimately the tag cloud as well. I absolutely love how outright they have been with their use of Web 2.0-based content and tools.

The downside of this site though is the lack of good editorial content and rich imagery. Its almost as though the site relies far too much on user-generated content, and not enough on solid editorial or factual content. Nonetheless, way to go Florida for being daring enough to do this.

Don’t forget to read Mo’s interview with Florida’s CA Clark and his thoughts on the site too.
http://traveltrendreport.blogspot.com/2007/12/case-study-conversation-with.html

So many good things to point out here on HawaiianAir.com, but I’ll just point out the ones I feel are the most important:

• Destination photography – novel idea folks…Delta.com did this a couple years ago. Why show a photo of a jet, which is quite possibly the worst part of your actual vacation itself?
• Simplified information display and navigation throughout the whole website.
• Minimized number of mouse clicks and page refreshes to interact with the interface. This is actually huge, because nothing is more frustrating than the unnecessary page refresh.
• Great use of client-side/DHTML interface interactions.
• Intelligent and easy-to-use calendar selector for choosing your dates. Seriously, I think airline websites have the worst calendar selectors of any site out there.
• A Trip Planner section of the website (licensed from HomeAndAbroad.com).
• A useful FAQ section (and FAQs integrated throughout the website).
• A nearly standards-compliant website – lighter page weight, which means faster page download.
• A “Whats New” page that explains all of the new features of the site

Big kudos to Hawaiian Airlines, Frog Design, and all others involved in this refresh.