Cuil Search Can't Find Its Way Out of a Paper Bag
Lately, the news has been full of reports of
Cuil,
a new search engine that will be the death of Google. Founded by former Google-meisters,
the new search engine promises new algorithms and claims to index a vaster swath
of the Internet.
It's pretty easy to easy to check this out; just type in your name. In my case,
the results were more scant than they should've been, and many of them were
downright random. For instance, there are images from things I've written next
to items that have nothing to do with the text. And when you click on the image
-- say, of a white paper -- it brings you somewhere else. Bizarre.
As for the "Doug Barney" search test, Google returns 4,300 while
Cuil only gives me 3,235 -- not exactly a wider swath. Also, the only option
I could find in Cuil was a straight search, with no options for images, news
groups or blogs.
Next, I searched "Cuil" on Cuil and got 121,578 results, mostly about
Ireland. I searched for "Cuil" on Google and got over 5 million. The
first result? "Cuil Needs to Fix its Technology Before it Gets Hot."
Coincidence?
And as my 15-year-old son David pointed out, Cuil is spending money like it's
already made it, with free lunches, free personal trainers and complimentary
strawberries and muffins.
Dave did some investigating himself. Knowing that Digg has been knocking Cuil,
he did a little searching. He looked on Digg and Cuil, and didn't see these
any of these negative articles. He did the same thing with Google and the second
result is "Cuil = Epic Fail."
While I'd love for someone, anyone, to knock Google off its pretentious perch,
Cuil ain't it -- at least, so far. Does anyone like any search engine other
than Google? Tell us why it's safe to ditch Google by writing [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on August 04, 2008