Cuil Takes the Google Challenge

With great fanfare and PR flash, a new search engine was launched this week with the name of Cuil, pronounced “cool”.  They claim to have indexed more sites that Google and will rank the results by content rather than popularity.  Also, the results will be displayed in a unique magazine style layout and have added tabs to lead you to other relevant searches.  Just the thought of taking on Google is a bit daunting.  Two pretty impressive companies (Microsoft and Yahoo) keep falling behind in the race to own search.  Has any other company, product or service become such a big part of our lives and culture as Google in such a short period of time?  Not only has it become a verb, but starting a search on Google has become hard wired into our brains.  Taking on Google would be like taking on Coke with a new start up cola.  Don’t know if I would wager on surpassing Google, but in the tech game the better mousetrap sometimes wins. 

I gave Cuil a try in its first week and I was not all that impressed.  Right off, it does not have the other features of Google such as news, images and maps.  I did a search on Custom Media (the key word we most focus on) and didn’t think the results were anywhere as relevant as on Google.  King Fish Media generally ranks 9 or 10 on page one with Google and we were back on page seven with Cuil.  There were tons of rankings from the same sites listed over and over again.  Many of which had a mere mention of Custom Media rather than being a site about Custom Media. A search on King Fish Media itself turns up the freshest links and most relevant news on Google.  On Cuil it was a hodgepodge of old news and odd links.  I found this general pattern on a number of different key word searches.  However, the strangest thing was the image Cuil puts next to the individual search results.  In the vast majority of cases the images had absolutely nothing to do with the link referenced.  Usually they were random pictures or logos with no relevance to the result.  It was odd to see a link that referred to me personally with other people’s pictures.  Not sure what that’s all about, but it’s not “cuil”

Keep in mind this is just my own testing on week one.  To be fair, they will need time to get in a rhythm and be able to adjust their patterns based on how people actually search the site. Cuil is getting beaten up by the tech trades and bloggers who have a similar impression.  This is a good example of why you do a “soft launch” to work out the kinks.  They launched with a lot of PR which served mostly to have people take a very close look at their technology before it is ready for prime time.

It is worth keeping your eye on their progress, and especially how your sites ranks.  My snap judgment tells me that Cuil has not yet given web searchers a reason to change their behavior away from Google. And, what works for Google SEO will likely not work for Cuil.  The only people who may make out in this deal are the SEO consultants.

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