Cuil Review (Search Engine)

Cuil.com (pronounced “cool”) is a new search engine which is aiming to make a dent in Google’s dominance. Does it have a shot? It brings a few things to the table, but overall needs some work.

I’m not sure if I am loving the column layout, but it could potentially grow on me.  I do like how they provide a bit more of a description than Google does, however, that is certainly not a deal-maker.  This is something Google can add very easily to their results.  Google out preforms them in search relevancy and result returns as well.  Even though Cuil supposedly has a larger index, Google’s results are much more relevant and provide much more results per query. Where Cuil does have some interesting items is their more generalized search categories – when you search something like New York or France it provides a number of categories with very relevant results.

Okay, let’s look at this in perspective here, Google has been fine tuning their search engine for ten years now, Cuil was founded in 2005 and was released today (July 28th, 2008).  So they are less than a day old.  Should Google be concerned?  No, at least not yet (or any time soon, if at all).  Google is synonymous with the word “search” – you hear it all the time “Google It.”

Another concern of mine is people and companies who have worked extremely hard to get their Google rankings up and make their way to the top of search results.  I think this will be another obstucle in the way of any other search engine out there, not because it’s not “good”, but because Google is such a part of everyone’s life and many sites are built around its specifications.

Bottom line is that Cuil is interesting and will definitely be worth following, but it certainly is no real danger as of now – especially just one day old.

What do you think of Cuil?  Leave a comment!  By the way, did you find this writeup via Google, Yahoo, Live, or Cuil?  Let me know.