Will Cuil Search Engine Make Searching the Web Cool?

Look out Google, there's a new name in search: Cuil. The Cuil search engine (pronounced "cool") is brought to us by former engineers at Google that are out to show their former company who's boss.

But starting a new search engine to compete with Google is about like opening a lemonade stand in hopes of competing with Coke. It ain't going to happen. Not unless you dramatically change the game, and while Cuil claims they've indexed more websites than any other search engine and do a better job of bringing back relevant information, they still have to back up those claims.

Cuil Search Engine - The Good

One neat thing Cuil brings to search is a different presentation. Instead of a list of links with a short description, Cuil lists websites both across and down the page and often provides a picture to go along with the description. This nice way of displaying results might be a real boon to visually-oriented users.

Cuil also allows you to explore a search term by category. For example, if you type in "Web 2.0," you will be presented with the opportunity to browse through such categories as "Dot-com" people and "semantic web".

Cuil Search Engine - The Bad

Unfortunately, Cuil seems to miss out on the number one key aspect of being a good searche engine: bringing back relevant results. While the results are often good, there are too many instances of either bad results or truly bizarre results. For example, the number one site listed in our "Web 2.0" search was Script.aculo.us, which is a JavaScript engine. And while I'm sure Script.aculo.us could be used to create a Web 2.0 site, I'm pretty sure that's not what the standard user is after when they search for Web 2.0.

Cuil also does a poor job of filtering. In a search for "wiki list," Cuil brings back seven entries from wattpad.com and two pairs are duplicates of each other.

Cuil Search Engine - Still Under Construction

Cuil might also be trying to pull a Twitter by ducking its responsibilities. While it has not been up for even 24 hours, it has already gone down under the strain of people trying to use the site.

Also, some of the links like "About Cuil" will come up with a file not found message even though the page will come right up if you click the link again.

Cuil Search Engine - A Brighter Future?

While Cuil may not be quite ready to take on a powerhouse like Google, it certainly has a leg up on niche search engines like SearchMe, whose visual search engine can be a fun activity, but isn't quite so useful when you want to find something fast. Cuil's method of displaying search results might be enough to gain a small following, and with a small following might come time to grow.