Cool review of Cuil search engine

July 29, 2008 :: cbensen

There’s a new search engine in town. Cuil is pronounced ‘Cool’ and many are giving it a chilly reception.

Background: It’s a startup created by past Google employees. Dan Sullivan outlines how it’s different in four main areas:

Big web index
Unique relevance algorithm
Unique results display
Privacy

The one noticeable difference is the way that it displays the search results. But I find that when I click on results that I’m interested in it takes me to the home page of that site rather than the permalink of that particular article. That’s like saying there’s the haystack, now find the needle!

The biggest issue that I have with it is that when I search for my name there are no results. I like being on the first page of Google search results. Because people commonly misspell my name I purchased both domain names: conniebensen.com and conniebenson.com. So I come up on first page for searches using both spellings.

I agree with Chris Brogan’s overview. It’s hard to be excited about a search engine that doesn’t recognize us. Many of those that commented on his post experienced the same as I did. Maybe in time the search engine will improve, but for the meantime… we’ll wait.

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