Cuil.com – The Google Killer, don’t think so
July 29th, 2008 Posted in Search Engines
After reading the article at DMNews about the history of Google killers, I decided to give my input on the new search engine Cuil.com.
Pros of Cuil.com
1. Having small thumbnails next to listing is not a bad idea. Big brands would be more noticeable this way. The thumbnails should consitently pull the logo of the website, this would make the thumbnails consistent.
2. Sometimes thumbnails displayed are the scary “X”. Search for “inkjet cartridges” on Cuil.com and you will see what I mean. Come on guys, it should not display empty photos.
2. I sense their strong point is how they index pages based on the “About Us” Page. I like this paragraph when they describe their concept of search:
Popularity is useful, but not always important
Popularity is useful, but has dominated search results so heavily that it gets harder and harder to find the page you want, especially if your search is a complex one. Cuil respects popular pages and recognizes that for many simple searches, popularity is an easy answer to your question. But for a deeper search, establishing relevancy is more than a numbers game. Cuil prefers to find all the pages with your keyword or phrase and then analyze the rest of the content on those pages. During this analysis we discover that your keywords have different meanings in different contexts. Once we’ve established the context of the pages, we’re in a much better position to help you in your search.
3. It searches fasts, no waiting here.
4. The related tabs at the top are nice since many e-commerce retailers are doing this. People are starting to expect this.
Cons of Cuil.com
1. I believe people still like to see listings listed from top to bottom in a single column, not in 3 columns. Faster to scan this way.
2. The Preferences menu has only 2 preferences. It would be nice to change the layout of the search page from here or modify how many listings per page you wanted to display. We live in a world of personalization and this search engine does not offer that.
3. People could be confused on what listing is ranking higher than another. Are the rankings listed in order from Left to Right OR down the first column, down the second column, & then down the third column? Wait, I don’t even know how your listings are ordered and I live in the internet 10 hours a day. If the listings are listed from top to bottom then you are cutting off searches. I see positions 1,2,5,6,9,10 on my screen. Is that what you wanted?
4. Does not notice misspellings. Try the word “tennnis” and it thinks it is the word you are looking for….. not good.
I could go on but nobody’s paying me for this kind of consulting so I digress. Would love to hear what you think of this new engine, anyone actually like it?
