Well lots of attempts have been made including claims of making a search engine better than google. There have been startups like Powerset or Mahalo both of which use natural language or human powered search results as the ‘better than google’ factor to their advantage. But even after the hoopla about who will be the next google killer be none seem to have come even close to the search giant.
Now it seems ex-googlers who were a core part of the google search indexing team in 2004 have come together to launch their own search engine known as Cuil.com.
A look at the management of Cuil and there remains no doubt as to why this startup has already raised 33 million dollars from venture capitalists even before their search engine had launched.
The management at Cuil includes couple Tom Costello and Anna Patterson who both have PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University and illinios University respectively and have had their share of search experiences in IBM and Google. The entire management team profile of Cuil.com can be found here.
Cuil.com boasts a simple fact that makes it Bigger than google. Cuil.com claims to crawl the entire internet rather than only a part of it. Cuil claims to crawl and index nearly 3 times more pages that google i.e. it is able to search for results across 120 billion Web pages compared with Google’s estimated 40 billion!
Now the question to ask here is does anyone even go beyong the first 2-3 pages of search result? Just have 120 billion pages doesn’t mean the search experience might be distinctly better to what google provides. But nonetheless to make sure they don’t look like google cuil’s search results are also showcased differently. Check screenshot below:
Cuil.com has a further filter by category once a you search for a broad keyword like travel or money etc. On the whole I ain’t sure that Cuil in its current state can be called a google killer though one might have to add that given the management’s previous experience in search technology one cant completely write them off and would have to watch their further progress.
Here is my review for cuil
http://moneymanagement.wordpress.com/2008/07/28/how-cool-is-cuil-a-review/
Purely going by search results I am not impressed at all by Cuil … unlike G it didn’t give relevant results for a couple of very unique terms that I test searches with…
i’d tend to agree too, having 120 billion is not the key, having relevant search results is… besides, google is way too entrenched for a small scale disruption to affect it
meanwhile, i thought this was a sharp and comprehensive analysis – http://searchengineland.com/080728-000100.php
Thanks for the link manuscrypts most definitely a very comprehensive analysis!
Well..Cuil might theoritically “search for results across 120 billion Web pages” but my experience says quite opposite !!! I tried to punch in few key words both on cuil and google to actually see how search gonna be different ….alas cuil showed NO SERACH RESULT FOUND or irrevelant searches whereas google showed me exactly what i was looking for!!
Sample keyword punched : Surabhi Dewra !!
i can find my name with google
but i cant with cuil
i mean.. i cant find my name with cuil
We need quality not quantity from current search engines.Cuil doesnt even look cool!
i guess they ll try to sell it out, to an existing search engine
i heard it can index the web faster and cheaper than google…. so if there is truth to that statement,
cuil is a hot property
so add cuil index technology + google
and u ll end up with cost saving + relevant results
My photo is all over the place on sections that do not pertain to me. And other people’s photos are on my references.
I am not impressed with the depth of the references- the layout gets gobbly
A very bold and pretty gud attempt by CUIL team. I know they must be knowing their shortcomings. But challenging a Giant like Google (Google is not a 1 day story, it’s more than a decade old now) takes a lot of guts.
I admire cuil team. Keep up the hard work and who knows CUIL will be the next GOOGLE.
As the Rajiv hit the nail on the head when he queried if anyone ever goes beyond 2-3 pages, should be one of the very first question an emerging SE company must spread on their table.
Since the time I remember searching, the only time I went beyond the second page was to check which page my website would appear on. Otherwise the first page and that was it. Probably students and professionals into research might browse much further. I am talking from a layman’s (majority of the internet) point of view.
Cuil, has clearly and miserably failed to empathize with a normal user. The page itself is cumbersome. Face it, Google rules this space and it will take a feature(s) beyond just innovative or vast search index to bring Google tumbling down.
Cheers,
Mith