Technology

A newcomer to the search scene rocked the technology blogs yesterday, but unfortunately not in a good way. Cuil, pronounced “cool”, was started by Anna Patterson, a Google alumnus, and her husband Tom Costello, a former IBM employee. Patterson’s work at Google was revolutionary, and analysts expected great things from Cuil. Unfortunately, users are not impressed.

Cuil was launched to fanfare and backed by $33 million in venture capital dollars. Their plan was to rework the way web pages are analyzed and cataloged. When Google processes a search, the query is handled by hundreds of networked computers, and each of the machines scour a different portion of the index. Cuil handles search queries a little differently. Their formulas route similar links to the same machine, allowing each individual computer to contain targeted information.

This means that Cuil can theoretically index more pages with fewer servers. Cuil’s main page claims to 121,617,892,992 web pages, while Google’s index size is unknown. The search giant stopped counting its catalog three years ago when it reached 8 billion pages, though a recent blog post (a veiled response to Cuil’s launch) says that Google has crawled 1 trillion web pages.

Cuil also attempts to turn conventional search interfaces on their heads. The attractive interface displays search results in three columns, with longer synopses than typical. The result is a magazine-like reading experience, which could convert users looking for a more in-depth view of the pages they’re seeking. The results will also allow for more images, sidebars with related info, and sponsored links.

Despite the more efficient cloud and the more attractive interface, Cuil is not a hit with users. A three-column display is only as good as the results returned, and users are reporting some glaring gaps. For example, a search for “Talkibie” returns just 388 results, compared with Google’s 3310. Google’s top link is the main page of Talkibie, whereas not a singleCuil result points to any Talkibie pages (only links to our articles on other sites, or irrelevant links). Even a word-for-word search for various article titles yielded nothing.

Some commenters on the New York Times’ article about Cuil report that even common search terms are not covered by Cuil’s index. One writes, “I tried a basic search: I searched my city name plus the word “churches” in Cuil. Apparently, according to Cuil, there are NO churches in my city because I received a “We didn’t find any results” message!” Another user points out, “If I was a VC investor in this company, I would be livid.”

While many new internet companies have seen a buildup of news stories upon launch, Cuil may have actually suffered because of the buzz and media coverage surrounding their product. Those 140 servers, which have stretched their budget and maximized their index, may not be enough to keep up with the curious who are testing their claims.

By Haley January Eckels