Is Cuil Cool?
Posted: July 28th, 2008 | Author: Patrick | Filed under: Tech | Tags: Anna Patterson, contextual, Cuil, Google, index, relevance, Tom Costello |Let’s all think back a little bit here. A decade ago, when you wanted to search for something on the Web, you actually had to search. Google wouldn’t have what you were looking for because Google didn’t exist yet. Yahoo was still more of a directory at the time. I think in 1998 I was using Alta Vista at the time.
Right now, there are only 3 major search engines worth mentioning: Google, Yahoo, and Live Search. Almost everything else is fed by one of these search technologies. We really don’t need anything even better…or do we.
Anna Patterson is an ex-employee of Google. She decided to leave in 2006 to develop her own search engine. Along with husband Tom Costello, they are launching Cuil (pronounced “cool”) today. The main difference from Google, which places a heavy emphasis on inbound links, is that Cuil places a heavier weight on the contextual relevance to the search query. One reason why this is important is because you could search for “George Bush” and it would break out Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. into different tabs. Placing a heavier emphasis on context can also potentially ease privacy nut’s concerns.
I played around with it a good deal already today and am rather unimpressed. Contrary to what they claim, for all of the search queries I ran it came up with nowhere near what Google indexes for the same term. Most of the time it did place exactly what I was looking for on the first page, but so what? Google always has what I am looking for right on the front page. It is always nice to find something that can do an ever better job than Google, but so far nobody has even come close, and I can’t really say Cuil comes close. Cuil claims they can index faster than Google. That is just not possible by such a small company. They may have fast and efficient software, but they don’t have the hardware that Google does.
Also worth mentioning is that you would think on the day you launch, your About Us page wouldn’t be a 404 error.
So is it worth checking out? If your really bored, go for it. I can’t see any other reason to.
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I’m not too impressed either. I don’t find the results to be all that relevant, at least not compared to Google. The presentation of results would take getting used to as well.
I also find that it doesn’t rank my sites well when I search for them by name. Instead it brings up pages that link to me first.
I don’t think Google has to worry too much yet.
Agreed. I tried again today, and some of the weirdness has been sorted out, but it’s still just not showing incredibly relevant results.
I love the argument that “well Google has 10 years on this index”…..well yea they do but they will ALWAYS have that decade long head start. That and they also claim to index 3x as many pages, so shouldn’t that be a null point?
It’s definitely one of the more interesting search engines to pop up in a while, but Google has nothing at all to worry about.
Saying Google has years on its index is kind of irrelevant, I think. Things indexed years ago wouldn’t be so relevant now without a refresh, and anything accessible could easily be indexed now. It’s like saying that Yahoo! had years on Google.
They’ve done a good job of getting attention, at least.
Cuil is anything but cool. The links it surfaces so beyond irrelevant. Worse, it tries to embed images with the links - which are often unrelated to the content it is displayed with. Google’s reign is in no danger. Not to mention, Mahalo was supposed to be a big deal when that launched last year and it hasn’t dented Google or Yahoo either. Not to mention, the name sucks. Don’t they remember the old saying that if you’re cool you don’t need to say it?
Exactly Mike! And some people were saying it was getting better as the week goes on……..not in the slightest was it any better. You really have to be practically perfect to knock Google off of its throne, and Cuil didn’t even show up to the fight as far as I am concerned.
Mahalo sucks for many reasons. Jason Calacanis, the guy that pretty much started it, is a real blowhard. He also let Veronica Belmont slip away to Revision3. She brought personality to Mahalo Daily.