Not so Cuil

Why Cuil is not a Google-killer.

It’s fair to say that most search engine news is outside of the mainstream. CNN doesn’t usually cover every algorithm update. So when we have 3 clients contact us within hours of a new search engine launch, we can be pretty sure that it must be generating some buzz.

That is certainly the case with Cuil.

It’s founded by a “trio of former Googlers”. The search index is more than 120 billion pages, “three times the size of Google’s index”. It promises to be “more comprehensive and more relevant (than Google)”. And so on, and so on.

It seems that everyone is so invested in finding a challenger to the virtual monopoly that Google has on search that they aren’t looking at the bigger picture. People use Google not because they have to, but because Google works. Google has been the clear leader since it launched, and everyone else is still playing catch-up. If Microsoft and Yahoo, with all their billions of dollars sloshing around can’t compete (and they can’t) then a new upstart like Cuil has no chance, however many column inches of news they grab.

120 billion pages index might make for good attention grabbing copy, but it’s virtually meaningless. People use a search engine to find things, it’s as simple as that. Cuil fails on that very simple measurement. It may have the largest index, but the results are in many cases, useless. Even in the areas where the results are relevant, they are not *more* relevant than Google’s. So why switch?

I tried some side by side comparisons:

I can’t see, as it currently stands, any reason why people would switch from Google to Cuil. Maybe I’ll be proved wrong, and I’ll happily admit it if so, but for right now, Cuil is anything but.