Chris Linfoot | Google killer?

Monday, 28. July 2008

Google killer?

A while ago, I was being bothered by large numbers of malformed requests for pages on this site.

They all turned out to be from a startup company named Cuill, which was refining its super efficient indexing algorithm by generating and then following large numbers of non-existent URLs.

Today, the newly renamed Cuil (1) takes the wraps off its Google killer, the eponymous Cuil.

Cuil does not currently index any page on this site (2), but it claims to have indexed a reasonably large number of pages elsewhere.

Go ahead and try it.

Search for something you'd expect to find easily. You may get some unexpected results.

I particularly enjoyed the seemingly random images displayed next to some.

This one, the sixth (or thereabouts) result from a search for stinkpad, includes an image which appears to read, in part, "manufactured without child labor - made in Pakistan"

The image, like the text at the head of each search result, is a link to the found page but is not even remotely relevant to the content to be found there.

Or try this result from a Cuil search for vowe.

The article being linked to does at least contain an image. Indeed it consists solely of an image, but it isn't that one.

Both the relevance of the results and the images associated with them appear to improve with more mainstream content, but who searches for Dell?

I don't suppose too many people are losing much sleep over there at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway...

Yes, it was originally Cuill with two Ls. One has been dropped, to save compute cycles and reduce carbon footprint.
I used robots.txt to tell their robot to leave me in peace.

Category: Google
Technorati: Cuil Cuill Google

Comments :

1. Richard Schwartz28/07/2008 15:40:40
Homepage: http://www.poweroftheschwartz.com

Hmmmm....

'We didn’t find any results for “lotus”

Some reasons might be...

* a typo. Please check your spelling.
* your search includes a term that is very rare. Try to find a more common substitute.
* too many search terms. Please try fewer terms.

Finally, try to think of different words to describe your search.'

2. Chris Linfoot28/07/2008 16:34:08

@1 - compare and contrast...

3. Rod Stauffer28/07/2008 18:22:03

They're having some problems obviously... Click on the "About" link. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't (Page not found). Same with the "Privacy" link.

So, perhaps that sort of issue is why we're getting totally different results for a search on "lotus":
12,600,000 "results"

And they have tabs for:
- All Results
- Lotus Notes
- Lotus Elise
- Lotus Cars

Clicking on the Lotus Notes tab lists 1,400,000 "results"...

But, click on the "All Results" tab again:
- We didn’t find any results for “lotus”

Erm, yeah. One second it's over 12 million, the next it's zero. OK then.

Launch gremlins I guess. Could be useful alternative (the layout looks interesting, and the tab concept is a good one). I appreciate the privacy aspect too.

Still, boils down to results and relevance. Time will tell on that one.

4. Karl-Henry Martinsson28/07/2008 19:44:07
Homepage: http://www.bleedyellow.com/blogs/texasswede/

I did a search for my name. 6000+ hits on Google, nothing on Cuil. Probably some launch problems.

5. Vitor Pereira28/07/2008 22:57:47
Homepage: http://www.vitor-pereira.com

@4 You should be glad it didn't return anything. When I search for my name it show a link to my blog, an extract from one of the entries and a picture of a guy I've never seen before.

6. Ben Rose29/07/2008 09:53:09
Homepage: http://www.jaffacake.net

From a brief testing session...it's rubbish. I doubt I'll return.

7. Anonymous Surfing14/08/2008 15:06:39
Homepage: http://www.gotrusted.com

I tried it out and I don't see this site as any threat to Google.

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