Product Review: Cuil

Today a new search engine called Cuil (pronounced Cool [don't ask me why]) was introduced to the web, it has been touted as the next greatest thing on the internet. The Menlo Park, CA company delivers content driven search engine results rather than page metric or popularity driven results.

Some even claim that this will be the silver bullet that down the Google juggernaut, but we are still years away from that. The company seems to have raised capital with no problems, and investors are convinced that it will find a niche market. So what is the site and will it revolutionize internet? I spent a few hours checking the site out and comparing it to other search engines. So I picked a random topic(How to grow my own pineapples), and I will compare the results with the Google results to see if there is a difference. I judged how relevant and how helpful each hit was.

Search Term: growing pineapples (somewhat general)
Top 5 Hits(Google) (4/5 relevant)
1. How to Grow a Pineapple Indoors
2. How to Grow a Pineapple from Grocery Store Fruit
3. How to Grow a Pineapple plant and get fruit!
4. A page about growing pineapple plants
5. Pineapple growing in Florida Home Landscape
Top 5 Hits(Cuil) (4/5 relevant)
1. Apartment Therapy The Kitchen: Summer Garden
2. Recipe(tried): growing pineapples and mangos
3. Pineapples Raking in Big Bucks for Mr. AOL - News ...
4. A page about growing pineapple plants
5. How Do Pineapples Grow


Search Term: grow pineapples at home(very specific)
Top 5 Hits(Google) (4/5 relevant)
1. How to Grow a Pineapple Top Indoors
2. How to Grow Pineapple
3. Growing a pineapple at home
4. How To Grow Pineapples at Home | eHow.com
5. Pineapple growing in Florida Home Landscape
Top 5 Hits(Cuil) (3/5 relevant)
1. I'm looking for information regarding how to grow ...
2. DJ Pitch Black, Suicide Commando Hellfire Mix - ...
3. bardofely's Profile - Mixx
4. gardening category
5. SearchEngine.net - Grow Pineapple Plant At Home

As you can see the hits from the sites are completely differ. Though I was very impressed with UI that Cuil offered(tumbnails and snippets from the sites before I visited them), I was dissapointed with the hits for specific searches. Though, I would have eventually found what I was looking for on Cuil, nothing beats Google at specific searches. Cuil's niche seems to be abstractions, and general topics. Their categorization helps such searches. Suppose someone was looking for a printer, Cuil would help them narrow down their search. But if you typed "laser color hp printer", you might get a few odd results. With Google the PageRank metrics iron out all of the irrelevant hits, in Cuil they are displayed. I think Cuil is definately a start, but they need a more effective business plan. I would like to see them enter the ad business(content driven hits would work ideally with ads ), and they should carve out a niche market with blogs and social networking. These two areas are the future of the Internet, and have inherrent advantages with Cuil. Cuil levels the playing feild and gives both small blogs and large corporations an equal opportunity. Next Cuil needs to address this apparent issue with specific searches, since people generally are pretty specific in search engines.

So my verdict is that Cuil, is an innovation. But it is not the innovation that will take down Google. Google is a powerful brand name, and it will be difficult to drive users away from Google's integrated conveniences. I was somewhat dissapointed with Cuil, but their engineers will eventually resolve these issues. It will be interesting to see what happens and I think that if this site pulls its act together it will be a success, since content-driven material is the future of the internet. Much of the information will be concentrated in small networks and blogs, and an effective search engine will have to exploit these mediums. I also think this is a potential aquisition for Yahoo or Microsoft, because it will finally give them access to a market to market that is untapped by Google.