google's next search engine threat? cuil.

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#1 Post by **erik** » Tue Jul 29, 2008 1:47 pm

cuil officially launched yesterday and are touting themselves as being the world's largest search engine. it was started by a few former google employees.

i've been using it since last night and am impressed so far. there have been a few cases where google does a better job but cuil isn't bad for being so new.

it'll be interesting to see if it becomes the next search engine monopoly.

btw, it's pronounced just like the word cool.

basketb · #2 Post by **basketb** » Tue Jul 29, 2008 3:24 pm

I'm not too impressed (at least yet) by either the quality of the search results (compared to google) or the presentation of the results (and the user interface in general) - the two or three-column presentation doesn't do anything for me.

Hopefully they'll improve before becoming obsolete.

pianowizard · #3 Post by **pianowizard** » Tue Jul 29, 2008 3:35 pm

They made a huge mistake that could've been easiliy avoided: they should have picked a name that's much easier to pronounce and spell. Yeah, it's a short name, but many people are going to misspell it as "ciul".

#4 Post by **erik** » Tue Jul 29, 2008 3:40 pm

broad or popular topics get tabs at the top helping to narrow down a search. the interface can be clumsy at times but it's a good start.

google still seems to be better with technical searches.

@pw - regarding the name, they explained that "cuil" is an irish word for knowledge. i agree that it might be difficult to spell. comically, ciul.com is for sale.

#5 Post by **rkawakami** » Tue Jul 29, 2008 3:52 pm

erik wrote:google still seems to be better with technical searches.

I don't know about that... I just tried the same search in both Cuil and Google for one of my personal web pages and Cuil had it in the middle of the 2nd column while Google didn't have it in the top 10 pages (about as far as I ever drill down the hits).

Of course part of that might be that Cuil didn't listen to (or read) my NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW code

.

#6 Post by **erik** » Tue Jul 29, 2008 6:28 pm

rkawakami wrote:Of course part of that might be that Cuil didn't listen to (or read) my NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW code .

do you have a robots.txt file at the root of your domain?

#7 Post by **rkawakami** » Tue Jul 29, 2008 7:44 pm

No, I've coded <meta> tags in the pages that I don't want indexed. Naturally it's up to the robot / spider / crawler that is poking around to listen to the tags or robot.txt file. Maybe that's why Cuil has billions of links

?

Ack... <lost what I was typing while I went to check out some Cuil search results>

I just re-started Firefox after clicking on a Cuil-provided hit that led to a site which tried to do a drive-by

. A window kept popping up saying that I had a security problem and that I should download a program which would take care of the problem. Yeah, right.

Right before this I encountered several "hits" which were .info and .org sites that were dead (already?). Most likely they are (were) link aggregators. So with this admittedly small sample size of searches I just used, I think I'll stick with Google and Yahoo! for now.

#8 Post by **gator** » Tue Jul 29, 2008 8:14 pm

Just search for 'cobol' or 'frog' on cuil.com and tell me if they really are going to beat google.

#9 Post by **erik** » Tue Jul 29, 2008 8:38 pm

yeah, i've since found a few cases where cuil came up seriously short. i'm guessing that much of their records base is from bots where google is also compiled of heuristics gathered over years of use. cuil may catch up but it'll take time.

i tried searching cuil for "CT51264AC667" and found nothing, where google had 576 matches. it needs work (or time) for sure.

#10 Post by **gator** » Tue Jul 29, 2008 8:43 pm

erik wrote:i tried searching cuil for "CT51264AC667" and found nothing, where google had 576 matches

Sign #11 of your computer addiction: you see a long alphanumeric part number and instantly know (PC2-5300 1 x 4 GB crucial SO-DIMM) what it is even before googling

Deckard · #11 Post by **Deckard** » Wed Jul 30, 2008 1:42 am

They have a long way to go, but it is good to see that at least people are trying.

I hope they find enough funding for tech equipment and will place datacenters around the globe as Google did to reduce latency.

#12 Post by **BillMorrow** » Wed Jul 30, 2008 3:32 am

they have a VERY long way to go to beat google..

mini_g · #13 Post by **mini_g** » Wed Jul 30, 2008 5:06 am

rkawakami wrote:No, I've coded <meta> tags in the pages that I don't want indexed. Naturally it's up to the robot / spider / crawler that is poking around to listen to the tags or robot.txt file. Maybe that's why Cuil has billions of links ?

This may be of help.

I'm liking where Cuil is going with this, if they can get the index properly set up. For now, Clusty is #1 for me.

beGi · #14 Post by **beGi** » Wed Jul 30, 2008 2:59 pm

My vote goes to Google, for now.... Not just because of search results, but also because of GUI and preferences... That Google really gets under your skin...

qviri · #15 Post by **qviri** » Thu Jul 31, 2008 1:16 pm

Ugly, weird layout, and loads slow. No thank you...

#16 Post by **erik** » Thu Jul 31, 2008 1:29 pm

it's starting to look extremely unintelligent to me. i can search for "thinkstation" but not "thinkstation D10". WTH?

Temetka · #17 Post by **Temetka** » Thu Jul 31, 2008 5:41 pm

gator wrote:
erik wrote:i tried searching cuil for "CT51264AC667" and found nothing, where google had 576 matches
Sign #11 of your computer addiction: you see a long alphanumeric part number and instantly know (PC2-5300 1 x 4 GB crucial SO-DIMM) what it is even before googling

I had the PN decoded in seconds.

You are right, it is a sign of computer addiction.

I like cuil interface, but google just has soo much more in their DB and their searches are more accurate (for now, IME).

I think they might do pretty good assuming Yahoo! or Google doesn't buy them or crush them first. Even M$ can't unthrone Google right now and to be honest I don't think cuil will be able to either.

Google has also become a part of our lives. I tell people to google something and they know what I am saying without me having to fill in the blanks for them.

I can't picture myself telling someone to cuil something. They will get that deer in the headlight look methinks. What is a cuil anyway?

google's next search engine threat? cuil.

google's next search engine threat? cuil.

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