Massive Cuil Search Engine Launched

I'm sorry to burst everyone's bubble, but I have yet to do a search and get a solid set of results (I tried about 20 completely different categories).

This is at best a competition for 'Live' not Google.

Initial Impression:

- Bad choice in colors
- Bad choice in result layout
- Bad choice in domain (name)
- great interface for offering alternative related terms
- Most important of all...barely ok results (at least for terms that I searched for)

This is a joke right?

Not impressive at all. I searched for some of my sites for search terms that I rank on the first page of results in Google. Cuil didn't have them at all. Cuil ran out of search results, and didn't have my site or many of my competitors. And, many of the results weren't even relevant. And some pages repeat on different pages of the search results--the exact same page and URL!

Many of my sites that I tested don't appear to be listed at all, even though they do have sites listed that link to mine. My most popular site doesn't even show up under a search for its name.

If they're claiming they've indexed more pages than Google, where are all these pages?

Repeating an earlier search, I now find they don't have any results.

As it is, I think most people who try this out are going to be disappointed and go right back to Google. I don't think that people are so set in their ways that they wouldn't switch from Google to a better search engine, but, such as it is, Cuil certainly isn't it.

After using it for a few minutes, I was seriously wondering if Cuil was some kind of joke. Seriously. It's that bad.

I think they have datacenter (load balance) issues, to go past SERP one or get a 404 just reload the page. Come on, it's day one, give them a break! Search business needs more competition.

This is a joke, right?

Maybe, maybe not.

Imagine a scenario where a big search engine who wants to put their current virtual monopoly into concrete. They already closed a deal with their biggest competitor, leaving the disappointing third market participant with very little chances to ever pull over.

Their real threat comes from startup companies. Small, young, fresh, hungry, bright teams that create a PR blitz and quickly take over the market. This is very very dangerous for the market leader.

Now imagine further that someone somewhere at the market leader figures out a plan to prevent this from hapening. You take a bunch of (ex-) employees, hand over some cash, create said PR blitz, and deliver - crap. Upon launch day, the site shows mistakes anyone with a basic understanding of this market would have avoided (e.g. missing about page). It's an immediate and massive failure.

<devilish smile> Now, how likely is it, that the media will write about the next startup to threaten that market leader?

- Results for over 500 queries I ran are totally unusable
- Images are attached to the wrong websites
- Brand name websites with PR8 plus in google have there brandnames showing spam, cgi hijack spam, ebay pages, amazon pages, forum spam, blog spam.
- Name is very bad, whatever marketing firm was hired should be fired

So far I am not impressed, maybe with all the information they are gathering and some good feedback they can make some major improvements.
Give them a couple of years and maybe they'll become a contender.
But, I agree with Farmboy, the name is an important part and they just don't have a good name.
They will either be bought up by another company in the next few years or change their name.
Just my thoughts

On a "site:www.example.com" search for my domain, the text in the upper right says "679,000 results" but the rest of the page is blank.

wah wah.

Is it meant to be an English language only SE ? I get almost no French or German results (nor .fr / .de), whether I search for single words, expressions or places.

Don't underestimate the people behind this technology and what they just may do.

I suspect the people behind this technology are underestimating the people behind search engine optimization techniques what they just may do. :)

I think it will be too easy to manipulate the results. I can kind of see how it could be done already after just looking at a few searches. With Google focusing on links from authoritative sites, it raises the barrier to entry, especially for competitive terms, and keeps out some of the riff-raff.

I entered the topic for one of my sites and somebody else's picture showed up. Where are they getting the images from?

A lot more work ahead. We have quite a few sites showing up on first page of their results which is great but in every case they actually show a thumbnail of a completely different site. Not getting any results beyond page 1.

I'm seeing mention of this on non-tech/webmaster forums so it seems one thing they've done right is the promotion. If joe average web surfer is seeing it and trying it out, perhaps there's hope.

Maybe their angle is to go after the paranoid!

Privacy is a hot topic these days, and we want you to feel totally comfortable using our service, so our privacy policy is very simple: when you search with Cuil, we do not collect any personally identifiable information, period. We have no idea who sends queries: not by name, not by IP address, and not by cookies (more on this later). Your search history is your business, not ours.

I have to agree with Zett. How could any search engine pro actually launch this site without intending to fail?

There are definately bugs this morning. For a major keyword ... no results.

For one of my sites, and unknown graphic beside the result.

Same for me. With my first 2-word search I am top center, but the graphic with the result is in no way associated with my website (don't know where it came from).

Then for a couple of other 3 word searches -- using generalized and extremely popular words -- I get no results at all.

BUT ... I love the interface and am more than willing to cut them a LOT of slack as they get up to speed over the coming weeks.

My one hope is that Microsoft does not turn their attention to this startup, now that Y has spurned their overtures. For the first time in years I am hopeful that a new player may have entered the stage with some real possibility. Keeping my fingers crossed...

....................

The first query I ran (regarding a hobby) returned very good results. I was impressed. Even though the results weren't any better than Google, they were just as good.

Then I ran a query for a tourist town I used to live in in the USA and got back all hotels and none of the numerous sites dedicated to information about the town. I am very familiar with the web sites devoted to the town's rich history, and they were all missing from the results. Very bad.

I also ran a query on a purely informational phrase for a specific French design pattern, and all I got back were sites whose product names contained the phrase (from jewelry to a pizza shop to a girls' camp--plus some SPAM keyword-stuffed results). Zero results that actually had any information on the subject I entered. On top of that, all of the categories in the "Explore by Category" had nothing to do with my query.

In some other queries I ran, I saw that some widely popular, credible sites were completely missing from the results.

I tried running some heavily commercial queries and got back spam sites. No big name sites in the list.

I was hopeful, but it failed miserably. I also agree that the name choice is awful.

I think the key will be to give them a chance in four weeks and four months after they launch. There will be problems when they launch, but they clearly have something here.

I think we are their "unit testing" phase. The basic errors we are uncovering are what one might find in first stage testing... Like having 8 out of 10 results on the first page be from the same domain... Or having your first 5 results be the same article from different domains. Just basic stuff they are not doing right.

I find it very bizarre that this is getting any hype at all...

I also find it entertaining the few new posters (1 post total) that popup on this thread and support it...

but they clearly have something here.

Microsoft Live has something... Ask has something... they all have something. But this is just bad...

they clearly have something here

What they still "have" is my photos slapped onto results for other sites - for one term (and I've checked only around five), eight of the top 20 results accompanied by my photos; and - sob! - my sites not among them.

They may have kissed the blarney stone as far as getting publicity goes [come on, using old Irish word for knowledge that most folk can't even pronounce - pretentious or what?]; but search engine quality suggests they need to go back to scuil.

I'm seeing good results for my sites but I have no idea where they got about 1/3 of the pictures.

I like the descriptions and all. It would be a different kind of search.

It's about impossible to explore right now but after the crowds get tired of trying it maybe it will be OK. It's finding "no results" for common search terms so I think it's just overwhelmed with visitors.

terrible results for our couple of niches. Although 1st pages are ok (still have spam and blogs), going beyond page 1 is just not useful at all. Wiki, wordpress, blogs, etc. all sorts of blank and duplicate content, etc. 2 sites dominate 1 niche, one that deserves it and the other is so old and rusty it shouldn't (it is on page 1 in Google as well) - and I mean DOMINATE, i.e. number of pages for the same KW from these 2.

Images are unrelated/taken from other websites. They seem to just map image title to KW phrase - which will lead to all sorts of legal and spam issues.

Needs a new spam filter. Needs a way to separate splogs from content. Needs to realize that 2 sentences of content with SEO does not make for valid or useful content (unless it is yellow pages or a simple question-answer combo).

Way to go, even if we are not on the first 5-6 pages of either niche, I welcome new competition. Unclean, ugly, bad domain, bad results, but any competition is a good thing.

hm... I find some links to my site on there, but can't find the site when I search for the domain name (and it's been up 2-3 years)

I'm doing some more testing that's showing Cuil to come up very short. I own many products that rank #1 in Google and Yahoo for their names (as you would expect). In Cuil, none of them rank anywhere in the first page of results for the product name.

I'm also getting no results at all for major brand names (even after repeating the search a dozen times and waiting for one to "catch" due to their current load).

So far, so awful.

The only reason they got any press is because they came from Google. Their name is horrible, as someone said earlier you will have to spell it to refer some one to it and the results are are worse than MSN ever was. The pictures show competitor company logos. That's a lawsuit waiting to happen.

So, this is just another search product in the many that are out there.

Zett said:

You take a bunch of (ex-) employees, hand over some cash, create said PR blitz, and deliver - crap.

That's my favorite tin-foil-hat comment in quite a while :) Ha! I love it! Brilliant!

Seems to be hyped up before they were ready to handle it.

15 results for "mysite.com" all are spam/scraper directories, over half in other languages. My actual site is nowhere to be found.

A search for my #1 keyword term (which I rank #1 or #2 on G, Y and M) says "no results".

Regardless of the reasons, they don't appear to be ready for prime time. Just a alot of PR hype...

And why didn't they make a play for the parked domain cool.com, even if they just re-routed it to their cuil.com domain?

Another case of too much VC funds covering up a serious lack of a business plan?

For anyone finding that their site has not been indexed, be sure you are not blocking them in htaccess (if it matters to you!):

Cuil IP ranges:
38.99.
208.36.144.
64.1.215

View the... Cuil Bot IPs [cuil.com]

...............................

Another case of too much VC funds covering up a serious lack of a business plan?

Eh... I'll give them some benefit of the doubt. I'm hearing about this site from people outside the SEO / webmastering community which means that they are getting a lot of buzz. I think they put up something that they thought was good enough and might be getting blasted by an amount of traffic that they never expected.

<sidenote> reminds me of a TV commercial that was on here in the US a while back. A brick and mortar launched a website and they all gathered around the computer waiting to see their first sale get counted. The counter rolled over to one and everyone cheered and shouted and popped champaign. Then the counter TOOK off and started rolling sales into the hundreds of thousands. HAha... everyone stopped hollering and started staring at the computer with looks of fear. :) Maybe that's what's happening here. </sidenote>

[edited by: SEOMike at 5:30 pm (utc) on July 28, 2008]

I'm seeing competitor listing appearing next to my logo.... it's a SERP madhouse!

This is a joke right?

Certainly seems to be - the results are hilarious and the unrelated images are a hoot.

What made me laugh the most was clicking the link to their Webmaster Info page:

Oops! We couldn’t find that page.

Please verify that the URL is correct and try again.

So they couldn't even find a page on their own site that they provided a link for.

In fairness, they did manage it when I tried again later, informing me that:

Jim’s the guy who keeps track of Twiceler, when he’s not busy with his horses.

Insert punchline here.

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