Gallery: Cuil searches--hits and misses

"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".

Altavista

Altavista reaches for numbers with 1,110,000 "cuil" hits. Gas relief?

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?

"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.

Privacy Policy

But more first-day jitters show off a bad link.

Privacy Policy

But you can find Cuil's privacy policy if you do your own searching.