If you teach Internet research skills to gifted students or if you spend time yourself looking for great gifted education teaching ideas or parenting tips, the newly launched Cuil Web search engine may be of interest to you.

Cuil (pronounced "cool") seems like a good option for students conducting Web searches because the search results display is free of advertisements and sponsored search results. Also, the layout and images used for search results are more pleasing to the eye. I think kids would be more attracted this kind of design than they would those of other search sites.

For those of us used to other seach engines, Cuil's two- or three-column layout is a little hard to get used to. However, once I got familiar with the way Cuil organizes search results, I found it to be a reasonable alternative to other search engines.

One nice feature of the site is that it is more graphically attractive that other search sites. Each search result is displayed with an image than is (theoretically) associated with the site. Cuil is still working out a lot of kinks in this area. Conduct a search for "Gifted Education" and notice that almost all of the images displayed next to search results are covers of books published by Prufrock Press. I don't mind, but I suspect the Gifted Education Program Web site for the Victoria, Australia, schools isn't too keen on having our old "Clearance Sale" graphic representing their site.

I'm sure Cuil will resolve some of it's rough edges over time. Overall, it is a search engine that you may wish to recommend to your gifted students when they conduct Web research.

[Update: April 10, 2009]

After watching this seach engine evolve over the last several months, I'm going to have to withdraw my recommendation. Frankly, it's just not very accuarate with it's results (seach for "Gifted Education" on Cuil and the National Association for Gifted Children doesn't even appear on the first page). The pictures that Cuil associates with web sits seem arbitrary, and the "Explore by Category" section to the right of the results is so random that it is of limited value. I thought this site would develop into an exciting, advertising-free, and visually-oriented search engine, but it has beed a disappointment.