Where were you when you first heard of Cuil?
I was driving down the road listening to one of the local radio station DJ’s carry on about this new search engine. Really I was.
Naturally the first thing I thought of was - Cuil! Something to blog about!
In all seriousness the radio station was carrying on like Cuil was the next coming of the mighty and powerful Google who frankly needs a competitor to knock them down a peg or two.
So I got home, went straight to my office, pulled up Cuil.com and did some searching which I will cover more in a bit. Afterwards I made a note to write an article on Cuil and promptly got immersed in work again for several days until seeing that note again told me I best get writing.
So I am going to take a look at the next great Google Slayer from a user standpoint. I am not one to sit here and spout off tech talk by the bucket load I would rather make it a little more fun and definitely more real.
What I like about Cuil
When landing on site the design is pretty simple with a black background that I actually like. I like the look of it and the fact that the black background is an energy saver over a white background.
Another thing you will notice is that right under the search box you will find a little blurb. Today it says “Search 121,617,892,992 web pages.” You really have to appreciate the attitude of the new guys that come out of the blocks making statements they index more than 3X the pages of any other search engine.
I appreciate that Cuil does not collect and store personal information related to my clicks and searches which protects my privacy. The importance of protecting individual privacies on the internet cannot be understated.
As many of my readers already know, I have a daughter so one of the first things that came to my attention is in the upper right corner. Cuil has a safe search feature that is on by default and you can see its status there. I can’t say that I tried every search to see if I could get some questionable content to show up, but I tried many that I can’t post here and the Safe Search feature did its job.
What I don’t like about Cuil
The day they were officially launched on July 28th there was a problem with picture relevancy by the search results. One of the things that Cuil likes to do is give searchers a visual representation of the content of the site. They have issues with the image being relevant to the results where images of competing products / brands are being returned even today. For example just now I did a search that returned the Authority Directory in results with a competing directory logo.
In addition the results of searches do need a little work. I have to give them a little slack on this point as they are just a few days removed from their official launch but another site of mine was not indexed there. Granted it is newer, but other search engines have no trouble finding it and the search engine that says they index 3X more pages than any other search engine did not seem to know about it.
Have they won me over?
At some point they might win me over. Cuil is already sending good traffic to Authority Directory which I find pretty Cuil. I have been using them for some searches, but I think they have a little more work to do before I go to them exclusively.
The big question everyone seems to be asking is this. Can Cuil actually beat out Google? I am pulling for them to be a strong competitor, but I do think they still have a long way to go. Google did not become what they are in only a few days and it will take Cuil some time.
August 4th, 2008 at 10:11 am
Google did not get where they are in a few days but they also didn’t launch themselves as a “google killer”, “yahoo killer”, “alta vista killer” or whatever may have been appropriate comparison at the time. I hate Cuil for being SOOOOOO overhyped and delivering SOOOOO little. Thanks for wasting time out of my day cuil - NOT Cool!
August 4th, 2008 at 10:49 am
It is a bit of a slippery slope Axcel. A start up can’t really come out saying that they serve no purpose and there is no sense in switching over to them - can they?
Cuil needed to create some controversy and excitement about their brand. I don’t think their search results are as good as Google’s right now, but when Google first started out their search results were not as good as they are now.
The bottom line as I see it is that Google needs a legit competitor or we are stuck with them monopolizing the internet and branching out from there. If Cuil can be that competitor, I am pulling for them.