Cuil Relaunches as An Automated Encylopedia: Cpedia

[engine]

Cuil is trying again with a relaunch of an automated encylopedia: cpedia (alpha)

Find 384,165,027 automated articles

[cpedia.com...]

[pageoneresults]

They're following the topic of course. The home page title has changed...

<title>Cuil</title>

You should really be focusing on other things. Like shutting that thing down. If not, the community is going to have a field day and you won't have a third chance. Seriously.

Oh, and hire an SEO!

[StoutFiles]

Some days I need a good laugh and Cuil always delivers.

I've always wondered what goes through the minds of the Cuil developers. Are they actually proud of what they've created? Do they actually use it instead of other search engines when not at work?

I think sometime soon I'm going to use only Cuil for a month and see if I go insane.

[edited by: StoutFiles at 4:56 pm (utc) on Apr 13, 2010]

[jmccormac]

Adsense is really slow at updating today. I guess we now know why - all the people in Google are falling around laughing at Cuil's latest effort. One of the biggest failings of Cuil was that the people there did not understand the nature of search quality or the way that sites appear and disappear on the web. This thing is just like a happy-clappy cargo-cult attempt at a set of illiterate ransom notes.

I think sometime soon I'm going to use only Cuil for a month and see if I go insane.

5..4..3..2..1 :)

Regards...jmcc

[edited by: jmccormac at 4:54 pm (utc) on Apr 13, 2010]

[engine]

The about page still says

<title>Cuil - The World's Biggest Search Engine</title>

[pageoneresults]

Strawberries and Muffins

[man in poland]

Oh, someone please put them out of their misery and pull the plug.

[vordmeister]

It doesn't look at all funny to me. It looks like they are copying our work, mixing it with others to try to meet DCMA fair use, and produce unhelpful gibberish.

I've seen better scrapers, but I don't like them either. They take our work, copy it and try to make money from it while confusing visitors.

Could someone from their country start a lawsuit. If Cuil can get away with this next thing Google will be doing it.

I've blocked the silly idiots from my site. Looks like the user-agent is twiceler

[brotherhood of LAN]

I wonder if the content has any 'search arbitrage' potential, as ex-Google employees were involved, and perhaps sell the idea, because I can't think of any other reason why they'd do this.

Saying that, the domain can/should get canned pretty quick.

[pageoneresults]

Congratulations Cuil, you've done it again. That makes two strikes.

Don't worry, by the end of today, it will have been forgotten. Pretty much the same way it went last time although there was much more feedback on your first attempt. Right now I think you've got the yawn from everyone here. Not to mention you've been labeled as one of those mega-scraper bottom feeding automated content generating crap sites. I hate to be so blunt. :(

No Happy Hour for you folks this evening. Not in a public venue anyway.

[mack]

I wonder if the people behind this "thing" are in any way sober?

Mack.

[IanKelley]

I can't say I'm exactly surprised, but this is bad even by Cuil standards.

I'm confused by the thread title though, Cuil is still online, it looks like Cpedia is an added service not a relaunch.

Cuil had potential

Hah! We're witnessing that potential realized.

[piatkow]

The more I explore the worse it looks.

[blend27]

pageoneresults, there is nothing on cpedia for "Strawberries and Muffins". Apparently they burned the last one..

[johnnie]

Nice scraper site. <block>

[Staffa]

I doooooon't believe it !

They're not scraping by the bucket but by the truckload. I just did a search on a subject that I am very familiar with and all they deliver is parts of the subject's forum posts strung together.

I blocked their bot from day one since they had no history and there are plenty of other sites to crawl who's owner doesn't either care or knows. Then came the Cuil disaster - instead of cool it should have been freezing water and maybe they would have sunk once and for all. Now this and how big was the sum of money invested in them ?

They remain blocked indefinitely ;)

[BillyS]

The more I explore the worse it looks.

That was my experience too.

[Trav]

This reminds me of the Bing 'Search Overload' ads that were playing here in the states... where various people in everyday situations are asked a question and respond with a rapid-fire string of pseudo-responses (SERP's read verbatim) that have little bearing on the actual answer being sought. Looks like Cuil has been taking lessons from TV, no wonder it's not working so well ; )

[iThink]

Any one can crawl a few million random pages and put one such site online within a few weeks at a cost of under $500. I am actually surprised that this is the result of the efforts of some ex-employees of Google.

I guess adsense ads will be live soon on the results to make money from the traffic.

[walkman]

Searched for cuil and here's the second paragraph, cut and pasted:
[cpedia.com...]

Best Web Hosting Offer Cuil launches with an index of 120 billion web pages making it a most comprehensive magic! Affiliate Secrets search engine on the web and also a potential try to get the Google competitor. Clickbooth Cuil but not avail due to flooding traffics and making their servers 'too hot' to handle. After googling Cuil is down at the moment to 'cool' down.

Hell no..! Cuil is a search engine that has launched on this (28th 2008). "But according to reviews on CNN, cuil fails to deliver a good service better than Google.

On a lighter note, as far as having cool stuff is concerned, cuil is way behind on the SEB (search engine bling) competition; be sure to check out the Google Vanity Ring, With Search Engine Popularity Bling. Cuil (which means wisdom or knowledge in Gaelic) was started by ex-googler Anna Patterson and Tom Costello. Cuil claims to index 120 billion pages; search giant google scans a trillion URLs.

Personally I will rather look to buy and sell "Fantastic Slaves" on Ebay [ask.enquiro.com...] than use this search engine

[sgietz]

This whole thing is clearly an elaborate hoax by Google :)

[Gomvents]

Can we agree to stop posting "news" about Cuil? Seriously...

[ken_b]

This makes me think of that old phrase....

"If at first you don't fail bad enough, try, try again!"

That is how it goes, right? :)

[commanderW]

Sadly, the majority opinion expressed on this thread is a mistaken one. Worse, some facts may have been misrepresented.

My own independent search yielded these results:

No Cpedia page for “crap”
We're showing web search results since we couldn't find a matching page in Cpedia, the automated encyclopedia from Cuil.

[subhankar ray]

They claim to have indexed 127 billion pages (may be not so good ones)..

[incrediBILL]

Cuil is a prime example of why I whitelist what's allowed to crawl.

If anything of value beyond the top 4 search engines happens to surface, I'll let it in.

So far, in the last 5 years, it has not been an issue, I've opened up for nothing new.

If everyone took my approach towards access control on their web sites, the amount of bandwidth freed up overnight would startle the ISPs.

[particleman]

Cuil had their chance and blew it. This isn't even newsworthy.

[docbird]

I indeed tried my name, and first name says - mysteriously:

"Married to my King Zephyr alto for almost 6 years now, my "The Martin OMMM" bari for nigh on 3 in a month, and my "The Martin" tenor for 6 months, we're engaged now!

Reminds me of a comedy game show, of the kind where comedians given words, and start making up a story.

The real people who could be laughing, though, are the folks who duped investors into parting with cash to setup and continue cuil (which I was utterly unimpressed with at outset; was surprised by some positive comments about it here on webmasterworld)

Entry for "laughing all the way to the bank" as yet makes no mention of Cuil

Maybe results are so appalling as crawler banned from many sites; and/or seeking to scrape only minor sites that might not slap em w lawsuits?

[Fribble]

Is there any chance of having this taken from the front page of WW? They built a scraper, and AFAIK scrapers aren't news and shouldn't be encouraged by being treated as such.

[caribguy]

@docbird I might start using it for the Friday word game in Foo :)

[tangor]

If everyone took my approach towards access control on their web sites, the amount of bandwidth freed up overnight would startle the ISPs.

Three years back I joined the incrediBill bandwagon. Actually works! I only deal with bots that misbehave, and it turns out the percentage of bad bots is <4%. All the rest grab robots.txt and leave me alone.

That said, you guys made me look... Searched my name (my publishing name, not my WW moniker) and was mildly surprised at the results. Does look fractured and hodgepodge, but every link in the serp (didn't check all 1,000+) were spot on. I'm not giving a thumbs up, of course, but I am intrigued because the serp returned also broke it down into sub-categories (which were appropriate).

As an alpha, this should have been done on the QT... it is not ready for prime time. Results are RADICALLY different than current SE's. I saw a new way to display search results, but freely admit it ain't worth crap for monetization. Meanwhile, I'll check back at cpedia over the next week with other searches to see what happens.

The next world beater this is not, but it does have an odd charm, at least for MY name! :) (Heck, it even found a page I'd forgotten about on a third party site!)