Cuil Review: Really? No Dave Burdicks? This Search Engine Is Stupid

When everybody I know sent me an email or an IM about Cuil this morning, I figured it had to be a big deal. Cuil, if you don't have the same type of friends that I have, is the latest hyped challenger to Google, and it has a sexy backstory, insofar as algorithm wars can be sexy: its founders are two years removed from being Googlers themselves.

Also, the landing page for it looks a bit slicker, but still familiarly simple, and the presentation of search results is unusual and a bit innovative. Having tested it out -- which we'll get to -- I thought that the selling point would be this presentation, which seems to come up more in the vein of a HuffPost or other online magazine-style presentation.

Instead, the thing that seems to be getting the most hype is the index-size wars. Cuil says it has indexed something like three times as many pages as Google. Google says Cuil Schmuil, essentially.

Cuil, by the way, isn't a great name. I think we can all agree. Hey, look -- Google is a dumb name, too. But at least it's a thing. But Cuil is pronounced "cool," and then only because every mention of Cuil says so. Me? I saw "kyoo-el." A colleague saw "cull." Or "quill."

But others? They saw nothing. Because the site crashed and crashed and crashed after getting a bunch of press on launch day. Here's the post from our friend Peter Kafka over at Silicon Alley Insider on Cuil crashing all day:

Cuil is a few hours old, so we'll assume that they'll fix their downtime issue fairly quickly, and that its results will get better with some tweaking. The bigger issue is whether Cuil's come-on -- we're bigger! -- will be convincing. We don't see it happening: Anyone remember the 1990s, when Barnes & Noble's BN.com tried to catch up to Amazon by arguing that it offered more books? And the challenge for Cuil and the other would-be Google killers is even steeper, since they first have to offer a search engine that works as well as Google's; so far they haven't.

But they're not going to stop trying: Even after dropping more than 30%, Google (GOOG) is trading at $492 this morning, giving the company a $154 billion market cap. The search market is just too big, and too lucrative, for the Cuils of the world to pack it in.

Now, I happened to catch Cuil when it was still up this morning. And you know what I found? Nothing! Nothing, that is, when you search Dave Burdick. You want to talk about a failed search engine, it's a search engine that gives a poor vanity-search result. I'm talking about literally nothing. Nothing about Dave Burdick at HuffPost, nothing about Dave Burdick the race car driver, nothing about Dave Burdick the risque photographer, nothing about Dave Burdick the daffodil man -- none of whom I am making up, by the way.

I'm not the only responsible journalist who is judging Cuil on the lack of Dave Burdick-related search results. Well, I am, but there's also Scott Anthony at Harvard Business Publishing who is judging Cuil, in part on the lack of Scott Anthony-related search results (OK, and smarter stuff):

Cuil's search engine launched today. It claims to cover three times the number of Web pages that Google covers (in trial runs this morning it ran very slowly and found nothing under my name!), and displays its results like a magazine. President and co-founder Anna Patterson, an engineer who helped build Google's search index, told the Journal, "You can't be an alternative search engine and smaller. You have to be an alternative and bigger."

To top Google, Cuil built a top-flight team of engineers with search experience at eBay, IBM, AltaVista, and, of course, Google. It is backed with more than $30 million of venture capital.

Sorry, Cuil, but if you can't cater to vanity, find another country!

Kidding aside, the search engine's presentation is interesting, but until it's both interesting and useful, it's going to be an also-ran.

**UPDATE** Cuil now returns nearly 9,000 results for Dave Burdick. I am a fully satisfied user, even though most of the related photos are completely wrong, at least they're funny. Now, pardon me, I have some serious reading to do about myself.

Follow Dave Burdick on Twitter: www.twitter.com/daveburdick

Comments

[wagadog]

Cuil's layout for their return results looks a lot like...The Huffington Post!

I think I'll stick with the Huffington Post for now, thank you.

[Chubbster]

Having gotten zero hits with Cuil on two un-obscure topics I'd have to rate it not yet ready.

[fasty]

Cuil is terrible. You don't even get results if you type in THIE OWN NAME!!! Try searching "cuil" and see what you get.

I searched myself as well and alll I got was random message board postings rather than my work information or classroom website.

My brother owns a company and his name is all over the web. I searched his name and all I got back was his wife, and she is NOT all over the web. Totally bizarre.

The sexy little interface only works if it gives you actually useful information.

[JBS]

I wasn't really impressed. Seemed like the same few hits kept getting repackaged over and over.

9000 hits all pointing to the same single instance.

And I didn't much care for the presentation.

[KillTheMessenger]

Truth is... Google is "optimized" and almost useless these days for serious search and "Cuil", well they will give you a random result and tell you nothing about their search syntax. I tried a few obvious things "+", "and" etc. and got the same seemingly random results and nothing that gave me the feeling that I could narrow down the search in a non-random way.

Search is dead. It's not their fault. It simply does not work when the data set you are looking at is essentially white noise.

[VPMedia]

I must say that as a web designer and online merchant I was anxious to see how my sites would do in the this new and "improved" search engine.

Wow! I'm impressed, my company is all over Cuil - by way of illegally copied pictures describing and promoting my competition! My site however is buried in the rankings - apparently whose only relevance is to be pilfered much like an unlocked car with the keys in the ignition. And in case I missed something that's still stealing right? The guy who gets into that unlocked car and turns the key is still going to jail when the cops catch hime, right?

So other than than stealing from me, Cuil has also yet to return a correct result when searching for a specific website name, company name or person.

AND, they don't even find themselves relevant in a search for the name of their company - I guess since have no graphics other than a black screen they had no need to list themselves since there is nothing to steal.

[jamalystic]

Well it is now more than 24 hrs and still no end in sight for the apararent outages. They say "first impreession goes along way" and i can bet u that cuil just made a rash of things. The jibes by this blogger seems so appropiate: Former Googlers Launch Rival 'Cuil'(http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=466&doc_id=160147&F_src=flftwo)

[robinhood2]

I did a search for 3% consols today on both Google and Cuil. Google thought I was looking information on Play Station devices. Cuil brought up an article on this type of British debt from the 1911 Encylopedia Britannica. 3% consols were Timothy Forsyte's favorite investment in Galsworthy's novel, "The Man of Property". Maybe there is a place for Cuil afterall. Forget about its silly name. Google has become too commercial.

[sociocanuck]

"Cuil, by the way, isn't a great name. I think we can all agree. Hey, look -- Google is a dumb name, too. But at least it's a thing."

So's Cuil. Knowledge, as far as I *know* is a thing. It's just a thing in an old foreign language. I'd be insulted to the very core of the Irish part of my Northern European heritage, but I might just be falling into the drunk and rowdy stereotype of that same heritage.

Except I'm not yet drunk...

[Sumocat]

I searched the name of my blog, Sumocat's Scribbles. A page from the blog came up second, after a dead page. Searching just my screen name, my blog didn't show until page 6. That's a far cry from the search love I get on Google.

[Blurp]

Reminds me too much of Cuir... the gay leather magazine.

[MiddleRoadLiberal]

The name sucks so hard and is going to be the second hurdle on the path to legitdom (the first being the fact that we don't need any more search engines--Google alone is enough, plus there's Yahoo!, Ask, MSNLive, DogPile etc.). The presentation is mostly eh. I don't like the "Explore by Category" because I thought it would narrow results, but instead it does a whole new search. Plus when you search for "Apple" and check out the recommendations under "Apple products" you get: Apple pie, apple juice, Apple Cake, apple cider, and apple crisp. It would actually be funnier if it were intended humor (to its credit, it does also list "Apple Inc. Hardware" and "Apple Inc. Software" categories--come to think of it, that part is actually quite clever). Most of the pictures won't load and are never relevant. I like the button list at the top that replaces Google's "Did you mean..." and is always present and always has multiple suggestions.

[rh654]

1) The name of the site "Cuil" is horrible. How can you have word of mouth when no one knows how to pronounce it - and once you hear it (whether or not it is properly pronounced) you have no idea how to spell it.

2) The VAST majority of people on the web don't understand and don't really care if the algorithms, etc... that "Cuil" uses are x% better - they will use what is "good enough" and "what they know" to get the job done.