There’s a new search engine on the block.
So what’s so different about this one you might ask?
Cuil (Irish for knowledge) calls itself the worlds biggest search engine – claiming to index three times as many pages as Google.
- The first thing that struck me was the results display. In a typical Google type search the results are all presented in a linear format – they’re in a list from 1-10 and you scroll down the page to see more. Cuil shows you a page of screenshots which you can browse and choose the one that is most relevant to you.
Now visual search is the way many of the search companies are going and a lot of them are trying out this model. (Check out Ask Binoculars for example). Visual results just means you get a look at a page before clicking into it – theoretically saving you time.
But on the day I did my searching none of my results were particularly relevant. When I went back to good old Google (which according to Cuil hasn’t moved on at all in fifteen years) – bingo – I found what I needed.
- Cuil are hot on privacy promises too, something which is becoming more and more of an issue as web searchers grow concerned about the amount of information gathered during a search. So it’s always good to see this.
- Other good features include suggested terms to expand or narrow your search.
My verdict? Cuil has great potential, so do a couple of searches on it yourself and give it a go. But it has loads of bugs to iron out and maybe should have been launched in Beta in the first place. We’ll keep an eye on it – it’s always great to see something new and different in search!
Have you tried it? What did you think?
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Monday, 11 August 08 at 2:52 pm |
Hi There-
Cuil is visually more striking than google….but there are certainly problems when you search. Some of the links I clicked on during my search lead me to old outdated sites that were no longer related to my search —-
totally agree….. It has potential but the bugs need to be ironed out…….its not a good sign when an up and running search engine gives results ordered very early in the list that are dead links or links to something totally unrelated
Tuesday, 12 August 08 at 3:20 pm |
I found the images are rubbish. I searched Cuil for RefWorks and the image next to refworks.com was a B&W photo of a 1920s construction worker with a curly moustache – where did he come from? I tried again the next day and he was gone.
Wednesday, 13 August 08 at 1:02 pm |
I’m finding wildly different results on different days too – and some of the sites I would expect to find don’t seem to be indexed
Thursday, 11 September 08 at 3:34 pm |
I like Cuil, partly because of the interesting layout, and partly because of the Irish connection.
I like to see search engines that are plain and simple and easy to use, but which aren’t Google, ever since Google caved in to Chinese demands for censorship, I’ve been wary about using them, because I always believed that they were the only search engine who wouldn’t cave to American pressures, and now I’m worried. Not that I’d be looking up anything questionable-it’s more a matter of principle.
I agree with Aisling though, that a lot of sites which you would expect to find in the first couple of hits for a certain search term aren’t there, but then again tghis means that you’re getting a wider range of information and sources than you would otherwise.
Definately a good search engine, just not good enough to stand alone just yet.