Cuil Announces New Layout, Other Updates

Cuil, the search engine that launched to great hype last year and seems to have disappeared since then, announced changes to its design, content, and backend today.

When Cuil launched last summer, the site’s design was one of its primary distinguishing features — it used a three-column layout that gave equal weight to a variety of results. After the new changes, there are still three columns, but the primary results take up two columns at the top of the page:

It’s still a unique design where search engines are concerned, but to be frank, it looks almost like a news/magazine-style blog now. And as you can see from the search above for “buy books” that doesn’t include Amazon.com in the results, it still has some relevancy issues.

Cuil says new content from MapQuest and Hulu is now included in the search results, and they’ve made some behind-the-scenes tweaks to improve speed.