Are you cuil?

July 28th, 2008 · Comments

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There is a new search engine, cuil.com, that aspires to be the next Google. It’s pronounced cool.

Cuil is the brainchild of Anna Patterson, who quit Google in 2006 to develop a site that would out-Google Google. Patterson is working on the site with her husband, Tom Costello, and two other former Google engineers, Russell Power and Louis Monier.

According to an AP report, Cuil’s search index spans 120 billion Web pages and the site is backed by $33 million in venture capital.

Cuil

There have been many pretenders in the past, so I don’t think Cuil is something to get worked up about just yet.

But the creators have interesting search engine pedigrees, and they are bringing a different kind of search result.

But is it what people want and need?

Cuil result for my affiliate blog The results seem to hinge on including an image with each listing, and sometimes it doesn’t quite make sense.

For instance, the result for my affiliate blog includes an image for a WordPress plugin that I blogged about on April 30, 2007 and the image had an alt tag that read: WordPress Mobile Plugin.

So, I don’t get why they consider that to be emblematic of my blog.

Anyhow, this is something to keep an eye on… just in case it blows up.

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Tags: Affiliate News · Affiliate Opinions

Viewing 8 Comments

Sue @ TameBay 4 months ago 1 point
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Their image matching seems rather random to say the least: this morning, we (blog about eBay) showed up with a banner that said "my success in scientology", which to the best of my knowledge isn't anything we've ever hosted!!

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http://www.tamebay.com

jimkukral 4 months ago 1 point
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I typed in Kukral and found no results.

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9 /people/jimkukral/ /people/jimkukral/following/ http://www.jimkukral.com jimkukral

Shawn Collins 4 months ago 1 point
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That's weird - I just searched and got a page of results for Kukral.

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14 /people/affiliatetip/ /people/affiliatetip/following/ http://blog.affiliatetip.com 504429203 in/shawncollins affiliatetip affiliatetip affiliate affiliate

Lavelle Collins 4 months ago 1 point
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I may be a bit too early to discount Cuil, but it's a bit too unreliable for me. One search query may show "no results" one time, then it may show a page full of results the next time with the same search query.

Also my eyes have to work too hard with the 2 & 3 columns. It needs a 1 column option where I can just lay back and chill while my eyes just roll down the page. But I'm diggin the longer descriptions. I didn't realize how much the other SE's were short-changing us. The horizontal dividing lines are nice too.

I like the suggestion tabs and the "explore by category" box, but they also need to allow the selection of sources such as blogs, news, etc.

It'll be interesting to see how they monetize Cuil. Will it be contextual PPC ads? Possibly Adsense? Or something we haven't seen yet from a SE?

Also, what has made Google so successful (other than delivering the most relevant search results) is their early partnerships with other portal websites like AOL and MSN to "enhance" their SERPs.

It'll be fun to watch where Cuil goes with this.

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1 /people/lavellecollins/ /people/lavellecollins/following/ http://twitter.com/lavellecollins

Lavelle Collins 4 months ago 1 point
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There also seems to be some negative issues with their robot "Twiceler" (Google it) that go back as far as 2006. Maybe this is why they claim:

"Cuil is the biggest search engine on the planet. In our quest to let users search as much of the Internet as possible, Cuil has indexed more than 120 billion pages so far"

Apparently they ignore webmaster's privacy so they can offer more web pages to searchers. That's not very cuil.

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1 /people/lavellecollins/ /people/lavellecollins/following/ http://twitter.com/lavellecollins

Shawn Collins 4 months ago 1 point
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I've noticed that when I made a query with the first letter capitalized, getting zero results, but when it's all lower-case, I get lots of results.

They need to fix that cap sensitive setting.

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14 /people/affiliatetip/ /people/affiliatetip/following/ http://blog.affiliatetip.com 504429203 in/shawncollins affiliatetip affiliatetip affiliate affiliate

beeze78 4 months ago 1 point
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Shawn,
That was my experience too, when I searched for my own company, Buckley's Auto Care. The results were irrelevant in most cases with of course, the alt tag pics. However, I do enjoy the horizontal layout of the results compared to the usual vertical stack. But again, search has to provide results that are meaningful, not just pretty.
Thanks,
Greg

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Simple Internet Marketing 4 months ago 1 point
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Well so far I am not impressed with Cuil, none of my sites show up, even when search for url's and another blogger, Chris Brogan, who is quite popular and well indexed does not show up either. We'll see....

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