Will Cuil displace Google?

Posted on | August 1, 2008 |

Anybody heard of Cuil? It is pronounced as “cool” (we thought it was cuill) and is the brainchild of Ann Patterson, ex-google engineer whose last search engine technology was itself bought by Google in 2004 and incorporated in it’s own system. Patterson isn’t selling this time, relying instead on a $33 million venture capital to try and eclipse the search engine giant.

Cuil home page

Patterson (who was disenchanted with Google), her husband Tom Costello, Russell Energy, and Louis Monier (the last 2 also ex-google engineers), have been laboring quietly the past year to create what they believe is the most comprehensive and efficient search engine yet, with an index that covers 120 billion Web pages. Google has stopped counting the pages it has indexed at around 8 billion but still believe they have the largest database.

Patterson, of course, isn’t disclosing the formula of how Cuil has developed such a broader network with a much smaller number of computers. A search engine index is important because the information, pictures and the contents cannot be found unless they are stored in a database.

However, Cuil’s ace isn’t a bunch of codes crunching numbers in a frenzy but the promise that it will retain no specific information about their users. A Google spokesperson has delivered the usual “competition is good for the masses” speech but analysts say this is the first time, and probably not the last, that they are up against one of their own.

120 billion pages… we took Cuil for a trial run to see what those pages are with the keyword “oronjo,” which has brought in visitors for ReapMoneyOnline.com from Google. Check out the Google screenshot below. That’s 3,890 pages for “oronjo” and ReapMoneyOnline is 7th from the top.

Now, the screenshot below is the last page for the “oronjo” search in Cuil. It says 879 results with nothing about ReapMoneyOnline. We did notice something with this search, certain blogs/websites came up in almost every page. Try it. Any ideas why they do? Does this make a Cuil search more relevant?

We’d certainly welcome another player in the field of relevant search engine results. We do hope Patterson and her gang is on to something. Maybe an end to search engine gaming?

So what do everybody think about Cuil? Will it succeed where Yahoo and MSN failed?

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12 Responses to “Will Cuil displace Google?”

Vic Grace
August 1st, 2008 @ 5:38 pm

It is fast that’s for sure. I will play with it for a while I like the layout. I have tried some rather obscure searches and it has come up with them okay.
Phil from Boris Vallejo Wizard Belt Buckle
August 1st, 2008 @ 11:04 pm

I played around with it a bit. Did some research on some keywords I’m very familiar with. The results were not stunning. While my sites were at the top as expected they were picking up strange pages from my sites. They were in not way picking the most relevant pages.

But I suppose no matter how good the algo it’s going to take some time to normalize.

Hey since your using commentluv maybe you should use nofollow also.

Phil
Jonathan in The Limelight
August 2nd, 2008 @ 8:09 am

I somehow don’t think so. I like the philosophy behind it, but for a search engine that claims to have three times as many sites in my database as Google, I have to wonder why why site doens’t even appear when i search for my own domain name.

Jonathan in The Limelights last blog post..If You Resent Wealthy, Successful People You Will Never Be Wealthy And Successful
Yellow Swordfish
August 2nd, 2008 @ 9:26 am

It’s already become my favourite but then, I almost prefer anything to Google.

Yellow Swordfishs last blog post..When Is Fish, Er, Fish?
RMO
August 3rd, 2008 @ 1:49 pm

@ Vic

It’s fast because, maybe, not many are using it yet so there’s less competition in bandwidth?

@ Phil

That’s what we observed too. A lot of pages from a site or 2 turned up for 1 keyword. There’s some issue of relevance here.

@ Jonathan

Maybe Cuil hit the floor on the wrong foot or still gaining momentum or there’s simply too much pages in there and it has become confusing for the logarithm. It sure could use some refinement but we noticed its homepage doesn’t say Beta, unlike Google who plasters most of their services with the word.

@ Yellow SwordFish

Hey, what a nice surprise. Currently testing the Simple Press forum here. We do hope Cuil will become a major player in the search business, just to shake up the status quo.

Thank you all.
LiNTEK
August 4th, 2008 @ 3:53 am

With google’s current infrastructure, equipment and people, it’s gonna be an uphill battle for cuil.

Who knows, no one in IT is permanent.

- LinTek

LiNTEKs last blog post..Why “human” translation is necessary
Karlonia - Cuil Results
August 4th, 2008 @ 10:21 am

Apparently Cuil was not quite ready for launch during the first day or two - many medium long tail queries did not return results at all, and even general queries returned way fewer results than they should have considering Cuil’s claims of having indexed so many pages already. They did improve somewhat afterward, however, and seem to be picking up more results and increasing relevance as more people have been testing out the engine.

In the long run, I hope they get things together and perform well enough to compete with the major search engines and then maybe do some advertising. I would like to see more serious competitors to Google in order to hold their power in check and encourage more transparency overall.

Karlonia - Cuil Resultss last blog post..English Lesson 19: Correct Use of A.M. and P.M. for Time
RMO
August 5th, 2008 @ 2:58 pm

@ Lintek

It’s not going to be easy and that’s what makes it more interesting because Cuil developers sound like they are sure of themselves.

@ Karlonia

You’ve stated what’s in everybody’s mind. Somebody’s grown too big for his britches.
Money Talk
August 20th, 2008 @ 10:51 pm

Thanks to the article, it make the life of a seo/link building easier and make the commenter come back again and again. I searched for a while to find the right answer to my questions!
az from debt reduction
September 1st, 2008 @ 10:50 am

Heard this name for the first time and playing with it. It will be good to combat monopolies, seeing google adwards prices.
Google is part of life now for millions worldwide and it won’t be easy unless advertise so much in electronic media and providing quality results.
google can only be beaten the way orkut, at first it was great but occupied by facebook, myspace and many others, so solution is not to provide a search engine but change the way people think of search.
Mr Article
September 10th, 2008 @ 12:15 am

Nobody will ever surpass google, in my opinion anyway. I don’t like cuil either, together was the first time i’d ever heard of it or used it, it’s really annoying. Google and their simple ways for the win!

Mr Articles last blog post..What do snails eat?
admin
September 13th, 2008 @ 11:32 pm

@ AZ

That’s a nice point. Maybe that’s what Cuil is trying to do, change the way people think of searching. It’s interface is different from what we were accustomed to.

@ Mr. Article

Yep, that’s the single great strength of Google that’s hard to compete with, it’s simplicity.

Thanks.

ReapMoneyOnline

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Will Cuil displace Google?

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