5 Reasons Cuil is Not Cool
Earlier this week, former Google staff announced the launch of their project that they left the mothership for — a new search engine, Cuil. The announcement garnered so much attention that the newly birthed site strained to deliver search results to thousands who flocked to try out the new service (myself included).
A few days later, the pressure has let up and the search engine is reliably delivering results, but the bottom line is that it’s no Google killer — it’s never going to become a verb. You’ll never “Cuil” something like you “Google” something now. Here’s a few reasons why.
- Cuil is fast, but Google isn’t Slow
One of the features that Cuil has going for it is its speed returning search results. And yeah, it’s quick (once the traffic decreased to levels where it could serve them.) But the thing is, Google is also pretty quick. A search engine isn’t going to sway users away from Google because of slightly better speeds. - Quantity of Results
Cuil brags that it has over 120 billion pages indexed, giving it the largest database available. Google has disputed that fact, but don’t disclose how many pages they have indexed. Access to more information isn’t a drawback, but it’s not necessarily a feature unless the results are relevant and well organized. I have never found myself on Google looking at one page of 350,000 results for my query thinking, “Damn. If Google had only indexed 360,000 pages on this topic, THEN I’d be able to find what I want.” Quantity isn’t everything. So how does Cuil do on quality? - Quality of Results
When webheads (such as myself) find out about a new product, we immediately compare results between the new and the old, often starting out with vanity searches. Chris Brogan tried it and noted that it didn’t return his main site’s URL after ten years of building a web presence. One of my co-workers tried searching for himself on Cuil and the first story returned had his photo, but the article it linked to was about somebody else with the same name. Cuil had mixed and matched two different people and returned them as the same link. Cuil falls short delivering on their “Organization is fundamental” philosophy. Fortunately, this is something they can improve, but… - If The World is Watching, Your Product Had Better Be Great
With such high-profile company founders, the blogosphere stood up and took notice when the site launched. And then… they didn’t have that great of an experience using it. The site couldn’t handle the traffic burst, so was inaccessible or not delivering results. When the site was working, the results were fast and plentiful, but there was relevancy problems. They could fix that, but will they get the same attention if they roll out a slightly improved algorithm as they did at launch? No. Their product right now is okay, but if it had been great at launch, that may have been something for Google to worry about. - Embedded Search
One major feature that Google has going for it is location. Google isn’t just at Google.com, it’s embedded in my web browser, on my desktop and on thousands (millions?) of web sites who are using Google to power their own site’s search. Cuil has a lot of work to do if they want to compete in this arena.
Maybe this comparison isn’t fair. A Google killer may not be the main aim of Cuil. It’s good to have alternatives and maybe being the “other” search engine is their goal. However, the comparisons to Google (fair or not) are par for the course, considering the background of the founders. Leaving a big corp to start up a competitive product is a tantalizing anti-establishment story, plus they do seem to take a jab at Google’s search result organization on their site. (Hrm, it feels a little weird to refer to Google as an “establishment” one would rebel against.)
Ultimately, Cuil wasn’t a product I was excited about after trying it. I’ll be sticking with Google for the time being. Something better could come along, but at this stage, Cuil isn’t it.
Tags: review, Reviews, search engine
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July 31st, 2008 at 7:15 pm
Just checked it out and noticed it doesn’t index pages using url parameters, putting it back to the days when Google didn’t do this either and people first started coming up with all the various SES urls that are out there now.
August 1st, 2008 at 3:24 pm
I think the launch was a bit of a flop, but I think they have something to build on. It’s hard to remember the days when Google was launched as a simple search engine and it wasn’t all that robust.
I think the question is, will users continue to visit Cuil on a regular basis to allow it to grow.
October 11th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
I don’t think Cuil will give Google a hard time. After almost three months in existence, a lot of people are still not seeing so much about cuil that could make them jump over the fence. Personally, I’d rather stick with Google. It’s simple one-line layout is much more appealing to me than Cuil’s 2 or 3 columns. Maybe I’m just being used to Google’s design, that is. And relevancy doesn’t help either. Why, Find.com can find my site but not Cuil.