First, to get it out of the way, it’s pronounced “cool” (in my head, though, I pronounce it “kewl”). Second, don’t accidentally type in “culi.com” or you will see some very naughty things that may get you fired.

Now that we have that out of the way, what is Cuil and can it compete? Do we need another search engine?

So far, in various queries I’ve tested, the results are rather poor. However, that is to be expected on the first day of a search engine. I doubt Google had it all figured out from day one. But I also read that Cuil has one trait that a lot of people are scratching their heads over: they do not take incoming links into consideration when posting search results.

Thus, to rank well in Cuil, it’s all about content and “context.” Of course, I’m not 100% sure what that means, but it’s safe to say that it doesn’t mean repeating a keyword 1000 times on a page will get you ranked no. 1 on Cuil. There has to be some other content surrounding the keyword that is relevant to the search and the query in question.

I also have to say that Cuil’s three or two column format for displaying search results in irritating. When reading search results, I’m used to going from top to bottom, not from side to side. My brain just isn’t accustomed to it although it probably better utilizes the entire screen and does provide images, although at this point, the images are rather buggy.

My take so far: the last two search engines I’ve seen launched, Wikia Search and Cuil, have been pretty lame at the start. Apparently, it’s difficult to create a search engine and it takes a lot of time and resources to make it work. However, with only $33 million in venture capital to get it off the ground, it’s not a bad start. Due to its adherence to not collecting search histories and user patterns. This may turn out to be their calling card to attract users: privacy.

But the results will have to improve for anybody to want to use it. And, frankly, I just don’t like the interface. A lot of people are reporting that they do, but I don’t. Simple is best in search and I think we’ve seen that borne out by years of testing.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 28th, 2008 at 12:03 pmand is filed under Search Engine Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.