Is new search engine ‘cuil’?

Former engineers from Google rolled out a new search engine Monday that they claim can, and I quote, “index faster a far larger portion of the Web than Google.” (Google claims to have indexed 1 trillion—as in 1,000,000,000,000—unique URLs.)

Instead of focusing on Web link and audience traffic patterns, www.cuil.com (pronounced “cool”) analyzes the context of each page and the concepts behind each user search request.

“Our significant breakthroughs in search technology have enabled us to index much more of the Internet, placing nearly the entire Web at the fingertips of every user," Tom Costello, Cuil co-founder and chief executive claims.

Google ranks search results by popularity and number of links going to the site. Cuil.com promises to be more democratic and give lesser-known sites a fighting chance for an audience. I applaud that idea, but discovered that cuil.com thinks—according to the accompanying pic—I’m ten years old, black, with multiple personalities. (That pic isn’t anywhere on my site.)

And while it lists 2,410,164 sites containing “James Watkins author,” by the third page, the results are less than relevant. I’m not sure how “wheelchair maintenance” ended up in the search results. (And I never did find my blog in the search. Sigh.)

So, at this point, I don't think cuil is that cool. What do you think?

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Comments (6)

You know... I'm not all that impressed so far. It seems oddly unreliable. I did the same search three times in a row. I'd searched once, didn't find /anything/ and my friend did the same search and told me he found a whole bunch of stuff.

So I tried again. I ended up with 4 million hits, then 4 million hits, then no hits. At all.

Of course, I might be miffed that my favorite forum didn't show up anywhere in the first few pages when it's #1 on Google. *grins*

I think it says something, though, when I type cuil.com into Google to find the new search-engine site without even realizing what I'm doing.
Who wants "just" a search engine anymore? With Google's personalized homepage and such, to just have a blank page with a search field and your logo seems.... flat.
Google's simplicity is one of the main reasons I appreciate it. I'm sick of web portals, give me a google toolbar anyday, cuil.com is just confusing!
I tried it out this morning too and wasn't that impressed.

Have you seen viewzi(.com)? That's pretty cool. I really, really like the Screen Shot view, although it takes a few seconds longer to load than a normal Google search results page.
The new visual search engine already exists, it is only for kids))
http://www.aga-kids.com/
Give it a couple of years.. and then we will see.

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