42 replies to this topic

[madams]

Some ex Google guys start ne search engine

Story here

I like it because for my main keyword i´m number 1

Cuil claims that its technology moves away from the methods that have driven Google's success.

Instead of just looking at the number and quality of links to and from a webpage as Google's technology does, Cuil attempts to understand more about the information on a page and the terms people use to search. Results are displayed in a magazine format rather than a list.

The company is also trying to set itself apart from Google by not retaining any information about what people search for.

IMO its time we moved away from PR and links. Good luck to them, I say

[scouseflip]

Interesting... but can't see it catching on unless they make serious improvements.

Don't like the layout in that 'magazine' format. Unless there is some great benefit that has passed me by, why shift so wildly from the format everyone is already familiar with?

Most the thumbnail images seem to be missing

Description snippets are too long to read at a glance

Pages take ages to load

The 'By Category' feature is turning out some VERY wierd suggestions on the searches I made just now

I agree that there needs to be something more robust than links for calculating relevence but this looks like a biiiig step back to me. The quality of the sites I am seeing in there is poor - they may be able to deliever pages with content relevent to the searched phrase but the quality is way off the mark from what I'm seeing.

The bit in the BBC article that stands out to me is:

By declaring its aim of taking on Google, Cuil joins a long list of others that have tried and largely failed to dent the search giant's market share.

Or maybe I'm just being like that because my own sites don't appear there yet

[Randy]

Competition is always a good thing IMHO.

btw, did anybody else notice that our own Ian has a link to his robots.txt generator tool from their Webmaster Info page? Woot!

And the funny thing I found, considering they're making user privacy such a big deal in their marketing. About every other time I click on the Privacy link I get a Page Not Found error.

[Bri]

I finally found the proper pronunciation for cuil (pronounced "cool"). hmm cuil..

[1dmf]

Well as far as i can see the engine is slow, doesn't work , has no next / previous buttons, not even sure it's indexed anything UK and if you go to cuil.co.uk , well you certainly don't get their search engine.

hmmmm, long way to go yet IMO!

[AlDugan]

I am very interested to see how this progresses. Maybe I am too optimistic but I'd love to see another engine actually compete with Google or even become the new "Google".

Right now though I don't even get any results for "web analytics". Not cuil.

[lisety]

I agree with Randy, competition is good! That aside, I kind of like the way the results are displayed but I haven't seen much because it's so slow!!! Hopefully they'll fix that soon.

[madams]

HR has 8 out of 11 possitions on page 1 for the 2 keywords in the url H-g- Ra----gs

Not bad Jill!

[Jill]

Nice! Search results like it's 1995!

[Ladybug]

New competition is never a bad thing but it sounds like it is still being worked on. I searched a couple of things and nothing came up for most of them. If they are successful google will just buy them out anyway.

[lepp]

I like the 3 column layout with the more detailed description and the images. (It doesn't hurt that our keywords are ranking well )

On the other hand, while some of the images were great (our logo!) there are odd images attached to some of our other pages that were ranking well - they weren't from the listed webpage or even our website.

The suggestions or categories are also rather odd and not what I would expect for my particular searches.

Much as I like the layout - where are they going to put the advertising results so they can monetize this site?

[incrediblehelp]

Some ex Google guys start ne search engine

Actually it was a woman, Anna Patterson and a couple of guys, Russell Power and Louis Monier

[Randy]

On the other hand, while some of the images were great (our logo!) there are odd images attached to some of our other pages that were ranking well - they weren't from the listed webpage or even our website.

I noticed this a couple of times too. I have no clue where they got some of those images from, but they're certainly not from my sites!

Definitely still a work in progress and pretty rough around the edges. Not even close to MSN's level yet, let alone Google's. But hey, if you don't dream big you can never reach the big dreams!

[webstream]

I wasn't impressed until I saw one of my personal sites on page #1 for a very competitive keyword. Then i said this is really kewl, or was it kool, or cool... The thumbnail image they have with my site was never I my site before either.

[ScottSalwolke]

It does look good. But what will make it work is if people are satisfied with the search results. Google succeeded because it brought up responses that met the needs of the people doing the searches. This is what will determine if this is a real competitor to Google.