SubscribeRather than trying to mimic Google's method of ranking the quantity and quality of links to Web sites, Patterson says Cuil's technology drills into the actual content of a page.Most of the time, I don't care so much about how many pages a search indexes as how relevant the pages it returns are to what I'm looking for. This was one of Google's major innovations, and what made it more useful than the competition.
Which brings us to the main thing: the quality of search. Let me say right of the bat that Cuil is not better than Google. It’s solid, but not better, and based on my limited testing, I’d even go so far to say that it’s not even that close. A search for “Mashable” yielded solid results, with mashable.com being the first one, but others were mostly links to articles. Google, on the other hand, intelligently put Mashable’s Twitter account and our social network, my.mashable.com, in the top 10.I think the real problem is that no search engine is ever going to be as good as google in any real sense unless google drops the ball somehow, because few companies are going to have the resources to invest in their engine. The original Google algorithm could probably be implemented pretty easily (Depending on how large of a scale you're talking about. Obviously optimizing and scaling it up would take some effort) but Google has refined their engines over years and years.
Another thing I like to try when I test out new search engines is simply type in some piece of my hardware, perhaps even incorrectly, to see if I’ll get drivers, manuals, and similar useful information. I do it because Google is so unbelievably awesome at it, that I can’t imagine anyone topping them in this area. Searching Cuil for “DFI Nforce 4” was extremely disappointing, as it yielded zero results. Google, on the other hand, gave me the official DFI site, plus a bunch of reviews, all related to the actual product I was interested in. No contest there.
I’ve got a theory: no one can create a better search engine than Google, simply because Google does not only search websites, but - through its domination of the market - the entire web bends to Google’s will because every web site wants to be positioned well on Google. Therefore, any competitor that may arise - however large its index, however good its algorithms - can only hope to be nearly as good as Google.I think that's wrong. For one thing, people actually optimize for a naive vision of how google works, not how it actually works, and cuil can use that naive vision to help build it's index, but the other problem is that while people optimize for google, they don't necessarily have the searcher's best intrest in mind. A search engine that's not being gamed constantly might actually be better then one that's not. But, the resource discrepancy I outlined above is probably a bigger problem.
I assume the name is from Irish mythology, given the original 'two L' name and pronunciation.
Jesus, you guys try to launch a giant search engine some day. To all the asshats who think "fail" is clever commentary; you go spend years building something and then launch it one day with giant publicity. Show some respect.Yeah, I have to say I'm pretty disappointed with all the hate as well, I mean, is having a search engine monopoly really a good idea? I don't believe it is. Innovation ought to be encouraged, not slammed by people who, frankly, couldn't create anything like this in a million years (well, maybe 15 years starting from scratch and learning all the CS that goes into it :P)
The most interesting claim Cuil is making is they can index 25 billion pages in a weekend. That's really, really fast and quite an accomplishment.Of course as we see, putting stuff into the index isn't as important as getting stuff back out :)
We didn’t find any results for “urban planning”Worked for me. It doesn't seem to bring up your site, but is that really a failure? Same with dw's "school of public health" query. Just because the engine doesn't return your site when you'd like it too doesn't mean it isn't useful for people who are out there looking for information, unless you're sure your site is the end-all-be-all on that topic. (Although I suppose it could be)
Always have to do that with new search engines. My site is usually near the very top of a Google search. Can't believe there's no results, though.
"Cuil gives users a richer display of results [such as] images to identify topics," reads the company's press release. And as loyal Reg reader Dr. Jonathan Grattage points out, he and his quantum research are identified with "little pictures of a US serviceman and a guy masturbating over some other poor sap":So apparently, Jess was lucky to have wound up with Kate Moss.
Some of the initial blog coverage of this story extended the hype. I must applaud Cuil's PR people for managing to get such overwhelming launch coverage, initially positive - although after bloggers actually started using the product the tone of the coverage changed accordingly.
The fact is, Cuil is a very ordinary product right now. In my own tests last night, I was left underwhelmed. Our official post today summed up our views: this is an average product that does not live up to its own hype, the NYT's hype, or the hype bestowed upon it by noted bloggers and those who thought they got a "scoop".
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posted by blahblahblah at 8:28 AM on July 28, 2008 [1 favorite]