Cuil Launches -- Can This Search Start-Up Really Best Google?

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48
Sphinn It!

Went Hot: Jul 29, 2008 - 11:23 am
Posted By: gyutae 562 Days ago
Source: http://searchengineland.com
Category: SEM

Can any start-up search engine "be the next Google?" Many have wondered this, and today’s launch of Cuil (pronounced "cool’) may provide the best test case since Google itself overtook more established search engines. Cuil provides what appears to be a comprehensive index of the web, a unique display presentation and emerges at a time when people might be ready to embrace a quality "underdog" service.

24 Comments

Comments

from rayallger 561 Days ago #

Votes: 2

120 Billion webpages it claims to search and yet a simple search for the NHS returns no matches. A little worrying that it can’t find any webpages from the worlds 3rd biggest employer. Google came up with just under 24million matches. If they want to rival Google they might need to be a little more impressive

from DanThies 561 Days ago #

Votes: 1

Gotta admit that I am "real skeptical" about their claims of index size, when so many queries return zero (0) results. OK, beyond skeptical. I think they’re just lying.A tip for all would-be search startups: "Don’t suck at search and don’t lie about your search engine."Yet another worthless press release for yet another worthless search engine.

from storyspinner 561 Days ago #

Votes: 0

man do I agree with you Dan.... that search engine is a piece of ... well worse that Wikipedia’s attempt. just really lousy for a search engine.

from vanessafox 561 Days ago #

Votes: 3

Dan, I think your experience may be more due to a bug than lack of indexing. I found that for many searches, I got zero results the first time. But if I clicked the search button again on that "no results found" page, I got a full list of results for the query. I don’t think they’re lying; they just have a bit of work still to do in the execution.

from peterdaly 561 Days ago #

Votes: 0

The ranking technology sounds like it’s loosly based on the way Ask.com ranks sites, although the UI is vastly different. Is the UI better? Not sure.Some queries I am familiar with show results very similar in quality (and sites) to Google. A couple obscure queries I am familiar with return some pretty poor results. Their algorithm seems to fall apart with low volume phrases.Pages from the same sites seem to be repeated a lot for some queries. Other search engines have the same issue, but with Cuil it is more obvious because the same site images are repeated over and over. It’s so bad it actually annoyed me to the point where I started shaking my head in distgust going through some SERPS.I think they’re on to something, but missed the mark on the details. It’s too bad, because much of what I didn’t like were minor issues that could be resolved. With a media blitz like they did, it will be hard to get many to ever come back for a second look once things improve.

from DarkMatter 561 Days ago #

Votes: 0

hopefully they will index the (mostly scathing) reviews that are popping up all over the web and use the feedback to improve. The serps with more text looks interesting, but might take some getting used to.

from peritus 561 Days ago #

Votes: -2

You totally dodged the issues with privacy. Because of that, reading your article was essentially a waste of my time.

from Chris1 561 Days ago #

Votes: 0

This site is not good at all... and the name is even worse. Great PR department apparently, though.Here is some good advice...http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/07/marilyn-monroe.html

from hugoguzman 561 Days ago #

Votes: 0

@Chris1 - thanks for the link! It was a good read.@vanessafox - thanks for chiming in. It’s good to see heavyweights chiming in on stuff like this. I have to agree with Dan on this one. Even if it is a glitch, it’s a fairly significant one. Moreover, the press release was simply too over the top and ambitious for my liking. This engine is simply not ready for primetime so it shouldn’t have fronted as such.My underlying issue here is that creating a search engine that bases its results on the on-page content of a page seems like a step backwards, not a step forward. The easiest thing in the world to game is on-page content. Inbound linking algos can also be gamed, as we all know, but to exclude this factor from a search engine seems laughable IMHO.

from HighPlainsSEO 561 Days ago #

Votes: 0

The relavance stinks. Lots of shopping feed listings. My logo is showing up next to a competitors listing (Cool).

from MiriamEllis 560 Days ago #

Votes: 0

Where are they pulling their images from? One of my sites is being brought up for a result accompanied by a completely unrelated photo from some other website.Hmm...not too cuil.Anyone else having this experience?Miriam

from ankitrawat 560 Days ago #

Votes: 0

MiriamEllis @ Your are right .. its a big mess .. check this: http://www.cuil.com/search?q=ankit+rawat My SEO Moz Profile have a pic of a Cricketer .. lol, I know there is one Ankit rawat who is a Cricketer but he don’t come on SEOMoz and have nothing to do with that !!

from sza 560 Days ago #

Votes: 0

Start-up search engines still don’t realize that they don’t need to "best Google". They don’t need to be more "relevant" in some fancy way (relevance is just an illusion, anyway).It’s enough to provide a viable alternative, so that everyone who is wary of Google (and their numbers are increasing) could have something to promote -- on blogs, to relatives and clients etc.Lots of people check out Cuil during these days. Will any of them come away impressed? Will any of them change their default search from Google to Cuil? Replace Google as a site search provider with Cuil, presumed king of index size (which should, in theory, give sites a more thorough indexing)? Anybody starting to gush about Cuil to those around him? No. No. No. No.I’m with Dan Thies. Cuil’s just a three-day PR-wonder (or disaster).

from vlf4230 560 Days ago #

Votes: 0

Miriam, I think they are pulling their images from our site. I have found several of our competitors listed with images from our site. In one case we don’t even have an image and yet 7 of the top 10 photos are from our site.Gee...I hope our competitors appreciate the business we’re sending them.Jim

from JohnHGohde 560 Days ago #

Votes: -1

Well, until their servers are actually functioning we will never know will we? I certainly am not going to take all day to do a simple search.Next, I do not like any deviation from the well accepted 1 to 10 listings on each search listing page. That certainly is a big strike against Cuil, in my book.Second, claiming to have indexed a web page does not mean that they have indexed more than the first paragraph or two of each page.

from incrediblehelp 560 Days ago #

Votes: 0

man I am already so sick of hearing about Cuil.

from multiz 560 Days ago #

Votes: 1

The three-column search results are annoying. I need to be able to skim results quickly. If they made it one-column, I think it would do much better.

from yojpotter2 560 Days ago #

Votes: 0

The site’s design looks impressive..I love the colors and design..but their are some major things to do with the results page.

from g1smd 560 Days ago #

Votes: -1

*** Next, I do not like any deviation from the well accepted 1 to 10 listings on each search listing page. ***<div></div><div></div><div>So, you’ll be hating Google SERPs for the last year or more then, with all the extra universal and one-box results added in for news, blogs, images, maps, etc?</div>

from JohnHGohde 560 Days ago #

Votes: -5

Somebody quoted my comment, ... Yawn. :("The three-column search results are annoying. I need to be able to skim results quickly. If they made it one-column, I think it would do much better."Ditto!An improvement would be numbering them, like Yahoo did at one time. <div class="comment-info">  <div id="reply-49307" align="left" style="display: none"> Send comment HTML is disabled <table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="320" height="240" class="mceEditor" style="width: 320px; height: 240px"><tbody><tr><td align="center"> </td></tr><tr><td dir="ltr" class="mceToolbarBottom" height="1" align="center"><img src="<img src="<img src="<img src="<img src="<img src="<img src="</td></tr></tbody></table> </div> </div>

from brianfidler 559 Days ago #

Votes: 0

What I find interesting and disconcerting at the same time is that many of the images don’t relate to the found site/article. It’s almost like they did a separate search for images relating to a term and then just randomly added images to the search results.Also their data is OLD. I did a search on my name which I always do to satisfy my narcissistic ways, and my like-named nemesis, who happens to play professional poker showed up everywhere. Even a Wikipedia posting for him which was deleted at least 30 days ago. When i finally did find a reference to me, it was from a posting I made in 2001 to a forum. Perhaps they need to order their database so that recency of data has greater relevance. And while they are at it, they ought to make certain the image associated with a listing actually relates to that listing. In other searches I performed I had similar weird results which were certainly not "better" or "more relevant" than Google’s results and frankly felt just a bit random. I’ll chalk it up to launching too early so may try again in a month or two...or maybe not.

from semscholar 559 Days ago #

Votes: 0

Cuil FAIL, next!

from vhiel 558 Days ago #

Votes: 0

i like the fact that they actually tackle privacy because with the big G, you can type in your home phone number and it will give you your address..... its an open book. Plus google tend to monopolize everything so its good to have a variety..but cuil has to still prove that a lot of things and for now I think google is still the dominatiing search engines.. Just my can of thoughts

from ketyung 547 Days ago #

Votes: 0

Umm, I don’t like the way Cuil lays out its search result. The search result doesn’t seem as relavant as others. It looks like a wrapper. Something like the Hakia is also a wrapper, could be a wrapper of big G or Yahoo. I don’t think those new launches could have their search database grow so big and fast to be comparable with the big G or yahoo. I also have a wrapper of Yahoo, an ajax-based search engine, http://www.askalexia.com/ajaxsearch/