I recently went to the new search engine called cuil to see what all of the fuss is about. Unfortunately it doesnt look like this search engine is quite ready for primetime yet. And thats too bad too, because I think the internet really needs some better search technology.

All The Buzz

A few months ago I first heard about cuil going online. It was supposed to be from some geniuses that left Google, as well as some crazy math Phd’s and high end web pioneers. They wanted to create something completely different, something that intelligently searched through sites and used its crazy algorithms to understand what you really wanted to see. This was opposed to Google, who had started to resort to tricks like incoming links and such to predict what other people thought of your site and therefore saying thats what you needed to see.

Finally White Hat Would Win!

I happen to be really into Internet marketing, SEO, and site design and things like that. So my first thought about cuil was, “Oh this is awesome! Finally I can just create beautiful sites with great content and it will be first on the search engines based on it’s own merit!” I’m really a big lover of honest Internet marketing, the kinds of white hat things they teach at Marketing Complete. I’m not into all that phony baloney stuff where everyone tries to jam their incoming links all over the place and make it look like they weren’t the ones who did it. Maybe i’m a purist, but I am a firm believer in putting up an honest, high quality site with loads of great content, and having the people come to me because of that. That isn’t the case in todays Internet marketing world unfortunately.

Close But No Cigar

So when I heard about cuil, I was totally excited. Maybe this would be the dawn of a new age. Well I went to the site and looked around. I tried about 20-30 searches or so of different types and I was not really that impressed. The searches really werent close to being as accurate as what Google can do. The little pictures that they put near the listing were completely off the wall for all but the very cut and dry types of searches.

With all that buzz and excitement, its too bad they didnt wait for a few more months until they had something a little bit better put together. I really think the site has a lot of potential, but first impressions mean a lot, and I think the casual web user who goes to this site in the shape that its in now is going to try searching for something and be like, I dont get it.