Review of Cuil
The Cuil logo
Cuil is a new search engine that was launched on July 28th. I have been checking it out and decided I would write a little review.
Site Look and Feel
I can’t quite pinpoint the reason but I don’t like how the search results are displayed. Maybe I am used to the look of Google or have been spoiled by shiney Web 2.0 sites. Cuil just isn’t sparkly enough for me. To me it seems like I am searching the archives of some legal site or something. The bottom line is the way Cuil displays their search results is flat out bad and does not hold my interest.
Search Results
Cuil claims to have three times the number of indexed pages than Google. I did a search for my name and the only results I get on the first page are comments I have made on other blogs. You would think that all I did was sit around and comment on DCR’s blog all day long. In another month or so I will try the search again and see what I come up with. If the results are littered with comments on DCR’s blog I will never visit his site again (just kidding Dan).
Site Name
Cuil, is pronounced “cool”, or so the founders of the search engine claim. For some reason I just can’t pronounce it like that. To me it should be pronounced “Q-L”, but English was never my best subject (as you can probably tell from my entries). Any way, imagine if Cuil was way better than Google and you decided to spread the word around school or work. It would be annoying as hell to have to spell it each time. Inevitably the person you are telling would misspell it once or twice and then you would just forget it because it is too much of a pain to tell people about it. Yes, I am reaching here but you must admit you most likely never had that Problem with Google or Yahoo!.
The fact of the matter is, I will not be switching to Cuil anytime soon for my search engine needs. I also believe there will be another search engine that will come along and make a name for itself. Afterall, ten years ago we had never heard of Google and search engines Alta Vista and Lycos were widely used.
Filed Under: Internet
Wow! I’m actually indexed now?
The search results are a mess. Are you supposed to read left to right or up and down or what? It strikes me as something that really wasn’t very well thought out, as though they decided to be different for the sake of being different and not for any reasons of usability or better presentation.
You are indexed alright. Thank goodness or I don’t think my search for “Andy Crofford” would have returned anything.
I have to agree with you on some things, Andy. After exploring the site I noticed that it did not seem that Cuil found as many relevant topics as the Google search results for the same term. The layout as well is very confusing and I had a hard time navigating through all of the different links. What do you feel, if anything, Cuil could do to improve its overall effectiveness, leading to a possible switch in search engine use for many people from Google to Cuil?