Gallery: Cuil searches--hits and misses

Gallery: Cuil searches–hits and misses

By Andy Smith July 28, 2008, 2:21 AM PDT

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Cuil.com

The husband and wife team of former IBM search engine developer Tom Costello and Google-veteran Anna Patterson along with another former Googler, Russell Power, set out to make a splash with a new search engine that promises to index three times more of the Web than their rivals.

Cuil (pronounced “cool”) promises organized results, different results from other search engines, and complete privacy protection.rnrn

Cuil jumped the gun and apparently launched too soon but its promises do sound good.rnrn

Following are screenshots from Cuil.com. Click on any image to enlarge.

"cuil"

Searching for Cuil on cuil.com on Monday morning gives more than 121,000 results but none on the first page are about Cuil and the categories refer to French breads and Scottish Glens.

Google cuil

“cuil” received 644,000 hits on Google but did give information on the company.

MSN

MSN search pulled up a mere 73,500 results for “cuil”.

Search.com

CBS’s (new owner of ZDNet) Search.com comes up with 110,000 hits for “cuil”.

Yahoo

Image: Graham Hills via Flickr

Yahoo

Yahoo was the winner (or was it?) with 1,320,000 results. Cuil’s premise is that very few searches require more than a page or two of search results–and how many people have ever reached 1,000? Hands?

Image: Graham Hills via Flickr

"Harry Potter"

A Cuil search on “Harry Potter” comes out better–with tabs on the top, an Explore by Category box on the right and scroll over notes than give site basics.

Drilldowns

This Cuil sample screen highlights the Explore by Category and the roll-over definitions to help you narrow your search.

In its documentation, Cuil says it will help you define your search with “Jaguar” as an example–and cites the animal and football team. However, on the Cuil site the information is limited to the car and Atari games.

The tabs help–if you’re looking for a car.

Jaguars

Still want to find out about the Jacksonville Jaguars but an “s” doesn’t appear to help.

Typing tips

Cuil will give suggestions while you type in a query.

FAQs

Cuil FAQs proudly refer to their Privacy Policy.

By Andy Smith

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