Well here’s something interesting. Unless you’re on vacation or otherwise out of touch, you’ll have heard of Cuil by now. Cuil is the new “hot” search engine on the block. If you’ve spent any time at all in search circles, you’ll know very well that every six months there’s a new engine that’s going to challenge Google because of this or that. On the one hand Cuil seems no different, but if you think about it, it does have some things going for it that not many of the previous contenders have had.
- Money - Now that Google’s had it’s successful IPO (and even more successful record since) at a time when investors were hating tech stocks, it’s a little bit easier to drum up some significant investment dollars.
- Scale - If we can believe that they’ve indexed over 120 billion pages and that at least 50% of that includes some reasonable level of quality, then that’s not only head and shoulders above previous entries, it’s head and shoulders above everyone. Which is why it’s somewhat difficult to believe…
- Mass Media - They’re talking about it. In a big way. Everyone’s clamoring to be the one who told you about the new cool thing on the web. Ultimately useful or not, it sure does have a lot of people checking in for a peek.
- Everybody Hates A Winner - Google’s been on top for a long time and people like underdogs. Combine the fact that the word is starting to get out about just what it is that Google does with its data and sprinkle it with the fact that Cuil has promised not to store any personal information and an interesting landscape begins to emerge.
- They’re Actually Different - While not radically different, they’ve taken a step away from relevant ordering. That’s a much bigger deal than I’m sure many currently realise. It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s a huge change in mental models for people. They’re also not operating on the web graph to determine relevance. That’s a very interesting and risky strategy. Keyword ranking is what got the old engines into trouble because they became easy to game. Will they be able to contend with spam?
The scale of a search engine has grown astronomically over the years. That’s made entering into the arena very tough. Cuil does seem to have one solid foot in the door though. How will it all work out? Only time will tell. So far they haven’t been delivered anything to any of my sites…
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8 responses so far ↓
1 Ling // Aug 2, 2008 at 12:18 am
The reason, I believe, that the media is buzzing about Cuil is that the promoters are ex-Google employees. Which is why I also think you may be right that this one does have a chence of making it big. They know, first-hand, how a search engine operates on such a giant scale.
2 Tim // Aug 11, 2008 at 12:19 am
Since when did we stop optimizing for keywords? All I read about is how to find and use the right keywords, keywords and SEO, etc, ad nauseum.
3 Crazy T-Shirts // Aug 17, 2008 at 8:30 am
Yes I completely agree with Ling; starting a few businesses over the years some more successful than others I can tell you that many big budget startups do exacktly that poach competitors employees. For a higher salary and more freedom these employees provide the benefit of experience and knowledge of the competition.
4 ideas to make money // Aug 17, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Agreed with Ling, that being said, I don’t agree that Cuil has anything major going for it that will make it a “google killer” most of my sites don’t rank perfectly for their own names even… they need to work on accuracy.
5 Jane // Aug 20, 2008 at 2:22 pm
I hope something will offer a good alternative to Google and Yahoo. Cuil looks promising.
6 website design // Aug 22, 2008 at 3:39 am
They are still slow as of the moment. I tried submitting my site to them and until now I haven’t got any response yet. But I hope in time they will be very helpful to everyone because if they don’t, then they are useless.
7 Clairvoyancy // Sep 14, 2008 at 4:58 am
The first car looks awesome, and the second one is very cute. I like them both. What a pity they are only concept. I hope someday everone of us can drive them.
8 custom designed hoodie // Sep 17, 2008 at 9:56 am
Something to note about cuil is that it returns results that are not always that relevant for the visitor. Also, the images it displays definitely has little relevance most of the time. All in all, it is not that great of an engine.