Is Cuil, Cool? New Search Engine Cuil Boasts Largest Search Index
Cuil (pronounced Cool), a company dedicated to search technology, launched their new search engine on Monday, July 28.
It has been widely editorialized in popular SEO blogs that the likelihood of Cuil overtaking Google is slim due largely in part to Google’s enormous brand popularity. But, Cuil says that they can and will exceed Google for a number of reasons, starting with their massive search index.
Cuil’s “About” page boasts that they are the “World’s Biggest Search Engine”, searching over 120 billion web pages and claiming Cuil’s search index is at least three times the size of Google’s. Cuil states that their searches and ranks are based on the relevance and the actual content of the web page as opposed to popularity. Some of the other interesting features besides the unique relevance algorithm include a large web index, an attractive results display page, and guaranteed privacy for their users.
One of the search features is called a “Drilldown” which allows the user to sort by category, allowing the user to refine their search further, discovering data that the user might have not expected. Cuil also features “Roll-Over Definitions”, giving the user more information about the link so that the user can decide whether or not to click through.
One more interesting quality of Cuil’s searches is user privacy. They state that they do not keep logs of users’ search activity and they do not record a search history on users’ cookies. They also claim that they will not collect a user’s personal, identifiable information.
According to recent press reports, Cuil has been backed by approximately $33 million in venture capital. So, backed by serious brains plus large checkbooks, Cuil’s potential might be something to consider
It will be interesting to see what effects, if any, Cuil will have on the SEO and PPC world since their rollovers may discourage click-throughs and their compilation of results can affect companies’ rankings.
