Cuil Claims and Concerns
Posted: August 1st, 2008
Every now and again a new search engine will hit the market, claim to be the next Google, make a small ripple in the search ocean and then dwindle off. The lucky few are bought and internalized, although most fall into debt and disappoint their VC backers. Some of the ambitious search engines include Wikia, Wikiseek, Mahalo, and Gigiblast. So far, none of these have shaken Yahoo or Live (MSN), let alone put a dent in the Google machine. Cuil (pronounced “cool”) seeks to do just that.
Cuil Claims
According to its info page, cuil is “an old Irish word for knowledge.” It has also claimed to be the world’s biggest search engine, indexing more pages than any other on the market today. In fact,
The Internet has grown exponentially in the last fifteen years but search engines have not kept up—until now. Cuil searches more pages on the Web than anyone else—three times as many as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft.
People probably don’t realize this, but Google doesn’t actually index the whole Internet so it’s highly possible that Cuil can index more… but at what cost?
Cuil Concerns
Google definitely has (or can come up with) enough resources to index as much as Cuil can, but they have chosen not to. The main concern with Cuil’s claim is whether or not it can serve relevant results to the user. For years now, the Big G has had a “supplemental” index for pages with shady/duplicate/new/pedantic content. Some websites are flat out banned from the index altogether.
The Question
Does this surplus of indexed pages in Cuil’s database improve the user’s experience, or is it all just a marketing tactic?
I can’t say I’ve been too hot on Cuil so far. Honestly, I don’t get it — what about that site would make me want to switch from Google?
There’s just no compelling reason, is there?
I’ve checked out Cuil and after trying a few search terms, i feel that Google gives much more relevant results. My take is that Cuil is a lot of hype.
People say when Google started it was anything but great.. The seach results were disasterous. We will wait and see how this new buddy grows.
Soyun.
So far there is no compelling reason to completely switch to Cuil as the results aren’t all that relevant and sometimes even dismal compared to Yahoo and Live (MSN).
This is the 1st time I have hear of Cuil. I am a big fan of Google for relevant results, and have been for a few years.
I am wondering though, how they can indexed more than Google and stay away from all of the garbage on the net.
The quality of Cuil remains to be seen, but the competition between search engines giants are a good news for end users and tech development.