DISQUS

Jemm · 1 year ago

Nice article, Louis! :)

Before Google was the de-facto search engine, Altavista, Yahoo!, Hotbot etc were #1 for many. I don't see why it couldn't happen again - at least on some niche areas of search.

Gordon Swaby · 1 year ago

I tried to have a lookie awhile ago, but unfortunately it was "down"

gzino · 1 year ago

I'll join the not impressed after 5 minutes of test searches crowd but more importantly fail to see their angle. What is their unique value proposition? Bigger and better? Those are awfully tough sales vs. G.

Svetlana Gladkova · 1 year ago

Louis, that's a very reasonable approach - though I myself have fallen for a fast conclusion as well. But my major problem is that they claim too much and depend heavily on being different than Google. But different does not mean better - and better should be on all points if they aim to compete. I actually enjoyed the little time I spent on the site - it offered quite a number of surprises in the search results, the surprises I would have never discovered on Google. So I have labeled it a "discovery engine" for myself and will definitely give them the time to cope with the initial feedback and make some improvements. But as of now I guess many of us are disappointed mainly because no one was admitted to give it a test run - and instead they had everyone use their own claims which proved to be not all that truthful.

Liz · 1 year ago

I like having a variety of search tools to use. I still Yahoo in addition to Google so I'm going to try Cuil on and off before passing judgment.

Ian · 1 year ago

I did some random searches for about 15 minutes. I found that the results were not as relevant as I expected, but not in the way I initially thought.

For big company sites and big weblogs, the results were fairly good. For lesser blogs and sites, the relevance dropped off quite substantially. That is most likely why a lot of bloggers might complain as vanity searches for themselves turn up nothing.

However, the layout of the search results is compelling from a readability standpoint. I think there's a space for a little bit of design and Cuil might be hitting a sweet spot with their results pages. Good typography and good use of columnar layout.

I think, as you said, with a little bit of time to incubate and garner user feedback, Cuil can become a competitive search engine.

ⓞnor · 1 year ago

I think you can set expectations. If you waltz out the door saying "Hey, we're awesome! Curious about the reasons for our awesomeness? Here they are! Want to make us your default search engine? Here are some instructions!" then it just sort of sounds like you don't know what you're doing. If you come out saying something like "here is a technology early look, this is a work in progress, please send feedback" then you might get a very different reaction.

On the other hand, the reaction of the Silicon Valley echo chamber for good or bad may not matter one whit to their plans. Search engine quality can be measured quantitatively, so they should know where they stand, and whatever their business plan is, it might not be affected by whether the TechCrunch crowd thinks they're as good as Google or not.

Louis Gray · 1 year ago

ⓞnor, I think you're spot on with your comments. I had originally thought about writing something to the effect that trying to compete against Google and being measured vs. Google, when Google has such a tremendous head start and a staggering amount of capital and hardware investment, is almost impossible to do.

The question is were the expectations set by media or by the company itself? How could they have better positioned themselves, such that the initial hiccups were more acceptable? And yes, the bubble of Silicon Valley might not mean one wit to their long-term goals, but it's also a lot harder to get outside of this little bubble without a push from the Valley itself.

chris peoples · 1 year ago

I'll admit, I jumped to a conclusion after a single search last night. But when you search for a popular term such as "lakers", you don't expect the search engine to say "There were no relevant results." Which is what Cuil did, last night. Today its returning results, so perhaps I'll give it another chance.

Still, you can't blame people for coming to quick conclusions. As they say, the first impression is the most important one, and when you come out making big claims like Cuil, that impression better be a damn good one.

Anatoly · 1 year ago

Actually, Don is wrong. 1% of the online advertising market is worth 1 billion. 1% of the search engine market is worth nothing.

Sueblimely · 1 year ago

I am not going to give up on Cuil on my initial impressions but will allow it some time to sort out initial glitches - not for too long though as I use search extensively and it is a tool that I need to be as effective as possible. After trying a couple of searches on Cuil that I had used on Google earlier in the day I was disappointed by the quality and quantity of results. Then I did a search for my name, Sueblimely on the basis of it being a unique word which should bring relevant results. It did produce a lot of results but I was disappointed to see very old links given prominent place, references to a blogger blog that I moved away from over a year ago and multiple links to things like my bumpzee profile.

charlieanzman · 1 year ago

Louis - While I think we all had a 'little fun' with Cuil on the launch, there's another part of the 'formula' that has yet to play out. Almost every search engine indexes search terms. This was really Cuil's first chance to do that and start using it (and it's probably a bigger factor than most of us realize). I just searched the same 25 terms that I did last night. Some were there that weren't before. Others still had some strange difficulties. They did get a lot of press. It'll be interesting to watch.

calebelston · 1 year ago

They claim to have more pages indexed than Google and that their specialty is in dramatically reducing the cost to crawl the web, which we all know is growing at a furious pace. Cuil did not set the expectations right for their ranking engine, which is the other side to the search coin. Having all of the pages locked up in your DB is all well and good, but being able to return the sites people want is what users see. I expect Cuil knows their ranking is disappointing certain users and is focusing their efforts on improving it.