DISQUS

lolly · 1 year ago

I just tried using Cuil now and their servers are over-capacity... I am thinking fail whale here ;)

I am not too sure about the name - it sounds like and is almost spelt like a rather rude French word...

guh · 1 year ago

Mashable effects? they said:

We’ll be back soon...

Due to overwhelming interest, our Cuil servers are running a bit hot right now. The search engine is momentarily unavailable as we add more capacity.

Thanks for your patience.


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Dustin Coates · 1 year ago

More like the Techcrunch, Mashable, Drudge Report, Associated Press effect.

I want to know who their PR people are. I'm seeing a story about the launch of a new search engine on the front page of my local newspaper's website. Very impressive.

HelenKovalyova · 1 year ago

Yep! Exactly! Everywhere Cuil is a hot topic today. Show us PR and Marketing faces :)!!

bill · 1 year ago

Checked out cuil. It really SUCKS!!!
Enter a search and you will get a zillion results, all the same few sites.
They say that the size of the site or the popularity of the site is not important in their ratings.
Every single result on the first page of anything that you search is a professional site, which may have absolutely nothing on the subject of the search.
Entering random URLs in your bar will be just as helpfull as this search engine

Stephen Kelly · 1 year ago

I for one am glad to see some one trying to compete with Google on search.

You do raise a very interesting point, that all [most] webpages are designed to be optimised for Google, so Google will be better.

Thanks
Steve

Silicon Valley · 1 year ago

It appears to work for only simple searches

for even mildly complex searches, we go no results returned

Of course the Search Engine is only a few hours old. Surely Google was just as bad during its day of debut.

Nicki B. · 1 year ago

I agree with Stan. I'm going to bookmark the search engine and come back after some time to see how it's improved.

viktor · 1 year ago

I bet with you that Microsoft in five years will have more search market than Google :)

Disclosure: I'm not a Microsoft fan.

fakedjs · 1 year ago

still has yet to index my site

bobjones · 1 year ago

ummm, the sites are listed with logos of other sites that have nothing to do with the link... complete garbage.....

Alan Lyes · 1 year ago

*Laughs* Your article certainly seems to hit the nail on the head. Search on Cuil for my name: nothing. Search on Google: 6 of the entries on page 1 are me....

Golfcult · 1 year ago

If you want to slay dragons you need to be quick, nimble and precise, Cuil is none of the above.

Chris · 1 year ago

The name sounds odd, "CUIL IT" like Google it, doesn't sound good. But it is better to have a good competition, wish them luck. Soon however it will end up with either Microsoft or Yahoo, I doubt it can withstand on its own.

Tony · 1 year ago

Thanks. But the site does not seem to work...:)

Ed Cunning · 1 year ago

I just tried searching Cuil for my name, my alma mater, and Howard Stern. All three of which came up empty. Not a good start.

Anna · 1 year ago

There is one more thing - Google is really global or very close to it. I can siting in Moscow find some information in spanish about some news in Madrid, and it is the same for many-many other languages... Can Cuil with it's so advertised index do that? No... at least for present... for example for request in Russian it returns nothing...

Utahcon · 1 year ago

Nice! Did a search for "chuck norris" and got 0 results.

Only Chuck Norris can find Chuck Norris! oh... and Google.

Fatbird · 1 year ago

It did not work for me. I have tried to search for some European music artists and I got some very strange results.

The 2,3 columns layout is dope!

ZenBug · 1 year ago

I searched Cuil for a band I used to play in. One of those result boxes showed an image of my guitarist, but when I clicked on him, it took me to a page that had nothing to do with my band, just a similar topic.
Booo.

Adam · 1 year ago

The thing about Cuil is that it's still crawling the web. For instance, this morning i queried my hometown of Toledo only to have 0 results. By lunch, i found 10,200,000 results. Give it some time to crawl through the web and get settled. I think in time that this WILL be a solid rival to google, unlike many other search sites that come and go.

Keeem · 1 year ago

What an incredible waste of 30+ million dollars. I get no results for a variety of search terms, and when I find results, it shows me a snapshot, sometimes paginated... but where are my other matches... it says it found 5534, but it's showing me 5 on page 1 of 1... Just... such... a... waste... Google need not worry about this one. :)

Andi Kalsch · 1 year ago

When cuil myself, I get my website with a photo of a woman I don't know. And all the other results are accompagnied by wrong images, too.

And most results are not unique.

They won't win the race, like all the other "semantic" engines.

Jena · 1 year ago

Have you ever heard of Blackle? www.blackle.com it's the black energy saving Google. I guess Cuil isn't that innovative.

Linda Nelson · 1 year ago

I always type in the name of our company with no quotation marks to see how a search engine does, because the individual words are pretty common. We were the third entry, so I'm pretty impressed. It took forever for this to work on google, though now we come up first and fill the first three pages. Also, I like that it pulls up pictures with the text, but some of them don't see to relate. It will be fun to watch and see how it goes.

janie · 1 year ago

Scroogle scraper with the CustomizeGoogle Firefox extension is my favorite way to search. That way I can enjoy the benefits of Google search without all their unwanted junk. I'm curious to see how well Cuil does. Some people must still recall how Google started out until they improved.

Vanessa Fox · 1 year ago

Hi Stan,

Interesting article. A couple of corrections though. Tom never worked at Google. Anna did, as did Russell and Louis.

Also, Cuil seems to have a bug that causes it to show 0 results in some cases the first time you search for something. If you do that same query again, it returns plenty of results. This is the case with your example, DFI Nforce 4. http://www.cuil.com/search?q=DFI+Nforce+4
I'm getting 186k results.

I don't necessarily agree that a search engines has to be Google to beat Google. After all, if the choices are Google and exactly-like-Google, then why would searchers switch. Cuil has an interesting approach in that they're trying to be completely different from Google. However, for a number of reasons, I don't think they've yet managed to build something that competes (yet). Even if they manage that feat (which is obstacle enough), they would still have to get a large percentage of searchers to leave something that's not broken and that's become a habit.

Amit · 1 year ago

most interesting part, if you search for "cuil" on Cuil engine , search results shows hell lot of things, but does not say anything about cuil, neither cuil URL. strange !

William · 1 year ago

Cuil aint Cool at all, I tried a vanity search on Cuil using my last name, it found no reults on the Query, Google yielded 218,000, enough said

Chris · 1 year ago

Your review wouldn't be as nice if Cuil were not backed by former Google engineers and VC.

phipphin · 1 year ago

Looks cool but when I tried to search - the results still not good enough

Oman · 1 year ago

Cuil are scraping images from our web sites and using them against search results showing sites of other companies – hardly a search engine – more like incompetent theft

BillyG · 9 months ago

"I’ve got a theory: no one can create a better search engine than Google"

This comment spoils the article from the start. I am sure some people thought the same about the horse and buggy.

I suppose every search should start with a wikipedia entry and some big brands.

karl · 4 months ago

gezzmoSearch Engine all the way