The not so cuil (cool) Cuil
If you browse the web these few days, you may have heard of Cuil search engine from the tech blogs and news. I myself knew about it yesterday when I was reading Cebu Entrepreneur’s blog.
Cuil is a new search engine that claims to be bigger and better than Google.
It was designed by a former Google search architect Anna Patterson and Professor Tom Costello.
So is Cuil really better than Google?
The answer is… no, at the moment. I’ll write about that part later on this post.
Cuil has a simple front page like Google so you don’t have to wait for hours just to do a simple search. After you type in your keywords to search, the results page will be displayed in a different way than Google.
The result page will be displayed in column modes (in which you can change at the bottom of the results page) and will have pictures associated with each result. It’s a fresh change from the boring look by Google Search Results page.
Something different, indeed (click to enlarge)
Since Cuil is not part of Google, it won’t be using the PageRank algorithm to measure the importance of a page. Instead, Cuil’s search is contextual (giving relevant results based on the content and context of the topic). For a more detailed technical explanation, you can read further on CNet news page as I’m more interested in sharing to you guys on the user point of view. Check out my experiments below:
1) Cuil contextual search based on content and relevancy? Sounds great, isn’t it? So let’s try searching for “How to make money online” on Cuil 
Seems that Cuil is interested in making food more than money (click to enlarge)
2) From Cuil’s Philosophy page:
“Existing technology can’t keep up with the increasing volume of Web pages. If a search engine is incapable of indexing the Internet properly how can it hope to provide accurate search results?”
Result: I tried to search for a review on my handphone. Different results came up on different time of the day:
I guess even cuil can't keep up with existing technology and its web pages? (click to enlarge)
An excuse for not finding results? (click to enlarge)
The funny bit about that “No results because of high load” is that if you search “htc p3600i review”, you’ll always get that message. Remove the “i” so that the keywords become “htc p3600 review” and results will come up. Put back the “i” and the “high load” message will come up again. High load? Really?
As you can see above, Cuil is inconsistent with its error message. When I tried to search for the Kaspersky antivirus yesterday, it gave me this error:
I would've thought searching "Harry Potter" produces more results (click to enlarge)
Today, however, it works fine.
Conclusion
I don’t normally like to bash people’s invention or software, but this time it’s kinda different. Cuil is still not ready yet for the release. I have no problem with that, but I dislike sentences (on Cuil’s website) like these:
- Welcome to Cuil – the world’s biggest search engine
- Cuil searches more pages on the Web than anyone else—three times as many as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft.
Cuil has potentials but there are still problems lingering around their application, servers, and algorithms. Again, I don’t mind that at all and I do appreciate their research and hard work, but claiming to be the best in search engines, even more than Google, I do not agree at this stage.
No Beta tag? Please think again (click to enlarge)
What do you think of Cuil, guys?
{ 26 comments… read them below or add one }
I think Google is still the biggest search engine in the world. Next is Yahoo. New search engines should not boost around that they are the biggest when they know they are not. Just my opinion.
Hye Munars last blog post..ASUS Eee PC 1000 Philippines: Price List and Specs
It is very difficult to beat google now. Any body who asks anything, they just say don’t ask me. just google it. google is what everybody think of when they want to find something…
I do the same
Cuil need about a century to beat google
did he said better than google? lol… thats is a good internet joke for me
mxyzplks last blog post..OMG I Got Pagerank
Right now it will be a tough challenge to beat Google. I really don’t like Google but that is only from a business point of view…as a company.
Does the fact that Google is the biggest right now mean there will not be a company who will crush Google?
Of course not and Google could face more problems down the road than the majority can imagine.
It is nice to see innovation at work…
Apollos last blog post..More Problems in the Financial System
Better google than cuil
Ifas last blog post..Avoid spam with wp-spamfree
I saw an advertisement for a search engine in a local newspaper a few days ago claiming to be bigger and better.
I think it could be Cuil. The marketing team is certainly pulling out all the stops.
Better Interpersonal Communications last blog post..First Impressions
I tried Cuil yesterday and had trouble accessing some of its static pages such as the FAQ page. It returned a 404, but was displayed when I hit refresh.
I don’t think they will challenge Google at the moment as they still need to work out some bugs.
We also need to remember that Google is now more than just a search engine, and has more than enough finances to defeat any challenger.
Pauls last blog post..What is Your Archiving Workflow?
I dont like cil’s font. It hurt my eye. are they using Calibri????
I am afraid they will have to prove themselves first before they can make claims like these. I suppose reaching their ideals is not impossible, but boy, have they got a job on their hands!
sailors last blog post..The Basics of Lists
Hehe yeah, they should have thought twice before claiming to be better and bigger than Google!
Sounds interesting, although it would be hard to beat Google and this is the first time I’ve heard of them.
The search results are not relevant to what we’re looking for. Need to improve that. For me, google is still the best!
Cuil..? Not happening at all.. Irrelevant search results; Font & Interface unpleasant. I like their positive attitude though!
It takes a lot of courage to “brag” like this, but why not wait and be ready before the bragging? If they can’t give results to single very popular terms like Kaspersky and more to that, give feedback like too many search terms, then where are they?
I like being objective, yes, and right now I am. But to sepak the truth about what i think, i will say they are making a fool of themselves
AZ Bloggings last blog post..Where is the Democracy in Blogging?
“I like their positive attitude though!”
lol, well said
Well I guess they have to start big. Wouldn’t be controversial if they just say “Hey, we are just another search engine! Come on, use us!”
Just waiting for a new program, maybe Cuil Adsense
)
Vans last blog post..eScan Internet Security Suite – The advanced AntiVirus, AntiSpam and Content Security solution
I want a list of titles 100+ long especially when searching obscure things. Until Cuil does that, I won’t even seriously be trying it.
Google is best and will b on top of other all search engines …
read about cuil on many other blogs too and many are not much satisfied from it … and same goes with me too …
Google is still the best search engine for me. Simple and gives out relative results most of the time.
BTW, Google sent out a clear message regarding Cuil’s boasful statement of 121 Billion websites index. Their answer was they have “1 Trillion websites” index.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/we-knew-web-was-big.html
Lloyd Lopezs last blog post..Get the Subscriber Count of a FeedBurner RSS Feed
Hahah. I personally believe Google crawls more than Cuil. Cuil doesn’t even have my blog yet in there! Huh, beat that.
Urghh – it’s everywhere! Like on every blog, even Google’s like Lloyd said! And it’s just… bad, I definitely agree with that. So why is it getting so much attention? Well, obviously websites that try to get themselves popular but are really not that good might get attention just for a laugh… but still.
Feabionsus last blog post..Another Domain Name, Another Chance
And, I too couldn’t find my website in Cuil – and they dare to boast? *shakes head*
Feabionsus last blog post..Another Domain Name, Another Chance
I haven’t heard from them ever since. Maybe they are going downhill already?
Hope they are researching on how to improve their engines.
It’s been a while since this post came out and the hype for cuil was heard around the blogosphere. Until I saw it in your random blog post section, I’d forgotten about Cuil completely. How are they doing nowadays?
I haven’t heard again from them since this post was written too but they are still around. At least now some results are coming up when I entered my name
Last time was a disaster