TECH 'Cuil' (pronounced "Cool") new search engine bigger than google?

http://www.cuil.com/info/our_philosophy/


Our Philosophy

The Internet is getting bigger and more disorganized every day. Cuil’s goal is to solve the two great problems of search: how to index the whole Internet—not just part of it—and how to analyze and sort out its pages so you get relevant results.

Cuil’s founders worked with other search engines and knew that tinkering with old systems wouldn’t work. A fundamentally different approach was needed. So we’ve developed new architecture and algorithms that can handle the exponential growth of the Internet and organize results that reflect its enormous complexity.

Cuil believes that:

Size matters

Size matters because many people use the Internet to find information that is of interest to them, even if it’s not popular. Existing technology can’t keep up with the increasing volume of Web pages. If a search engine is incapable of indexing the Internet properly how can it hope to provide accurate search results? Imagine if the phone company decided to stop listing infrequently called numbers in the phone book. Maybe no one phones your grandmother much, but if her friend from the old neighborhood wants to get in touch, shouldn’t her number be in the book? Cuil lists all the numbers, even the ones that aren’t called much. Because one day someone will need that number.
Popularity is useful, but not always important

Popularity is useful, but has dominated search results so heavily that it gets harder and harder to find the page you want, especially if your search is a complex one. Cuil respects popular pages and recognizes that for many simple searches, popularity is an easy answer to your question. But for a deeper search, establishing relevancy is more than a numbers game. Cuil prefers to find all the pages with your keyword or phrase and then analyze the rest of the content on those pages. During this analysis we discover that your keywords have different meanings in different contexts. Once we’ve established the context of the pages, we’re in a much better position to help you in your search.
Organization is fundamental

The Internet is information; usually too much. Ten blue links is a simple concept which fails to reflect the huge diversity and variety of information available to you on the Web. Cuil organizes the Internet so you can find the information you want. We separate different ideas from each other so you can choose the one that interests you. We pick images to illustrate the idea behind each page to aid you in your choice. We include roll-over definitions and offer you ideas to refine your search. We can do all this because we believe that information is only useful when it’s sorted. Cuil’s goal is to guide you towards answers to the questions you’re not even sure how to ask.
Cuil analyzes the Web, not its users

Privacy is a hot topic these days, and we want you to feel totally comfortable using our service. Because Cuil analyzes Web pages and not click-throughs, we don’t need to know your search history and habits. So our privacy policy is very simple: when you search with Cuil, we do not collect any personally identifiable information, period. We have no idea who sends queries: not by name, not by IP address, and not by cookie. Your search history is your business, not ours. We don’t need to keep logs of our users’ search activity, so we don’t. For further details, read our Privacy Policy. Don’t worry, it’s short and to the point. No legal mumbo-jumbo.

Former Googleers unveil Cuil, a new search engine

By Eric AuchardMon Jul 28, 1:18 AM ET

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080728/wr_nm/internet_search_dc

A start-up led by former star Google engineers on Sunday unveiled a new Web search service that aims to outdo the Internet search leader in size, but faces an uphill battle changing Web surfing habits.

Cuil Inc (pronounced "cool") is offering a new search service at http://www.cuil.com that the company claims can index, faster and more cheaply, a far larger portion of the Web than Google, which boasts the largest online index.

The would-be Google rival says its service goes beyond prevailing search techniques that focus on Web links and audience traffic patterns and instead analyzes the context of each page and the concepts behind each user search request.

"Our significant breakthroughs in search technology have enabled us to index much more of the Internet, placing nearly the entire Web at the fingertips of every user," Tom Costello, Cuil co-founder and chief executive, said in a statement.

Danny Sullivan, a Web search analyst and editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land, said Cuil can try to exploit complaints consumers may have with Google -- namely, that it tries to do too much, that its results favor already popular sites, and that it leans heavily on certain authoritative sites such as Wikipedia.

"The time may be right for a challenger," Sullivan says, but adds quickly: "Competing with Google is still a very daunting task, as Microsoft will tell you."

Microsoft Corp, the No. 3 U.S. player in Web search has been seeking in vain, so far, to join forces with No. 2 Yahoo Inc to battle Google.

Cuil was founded by a group of search pioneers, including Costello, who built a prototype of Web Fountain, IBM's Web search analytics tool, and his wife, Anna Patterson, the architect of Google Inc's massive TeraGoogle index of Web pages. Patterson also designed the search system for global corporate document storage company Recall, a unit of Australia's Brambles Ltd

The two are joined by two former Google colleagues, Russell Power and Louis Monier. Previously, Monier led the redesign of ecommerce leader eBay Inc's search engine and was the founding chief technology officer of two 1990s Web milestones, AltaVista and BabelFish, the first language translation site.

"They do have the talent that is used to building large, industrial-strength search engines," Sullivan says of Cuil.

Cuil clusters the results of each Web search performed on the service into groups of related Web pages. It sorts these by categories and offers various organizing features to help identify topics and allow the user to quickly refine searches.

User privacy is another appeal of its approach, Cuil says. Because the service focuses on the content of the pages rather than click history, the company has no need to store users' personal information or their search histories, it says.

"We are all about pattern analysis," Patterson says. "We go over the corpus (Web pages) 12 times before we even index it."

DOES SIZE MATTER, ONCE AGAIN?

Cuil has indexed a whopping 120 billion Web pages, three times more than what they say Google now indexes, Patterson said, adding the company has spent just $5 million,

Google itself preemptively responded to Cuil's arrival with a blog post on Friday boasting of the growing scale of its own Web search operations.

Sullivan said he puts no stock in either company's boasts about the size of their indexes, since it has only an indirect effect on the ultimate success Web surfers have in searching. And Cuil's privacy virtues are exaggerated, he adds.

Founded in late 2006, the Menlo Park, California-based Cuil has raised $33 million in two separate rounds: The first, for $8 million from Greylock and Tugboat Ventures, and the second for $25 million by Madrone Capital Partners.

Initially, Cuil is optimized for American English. Later this year, the company plans to enable Cuil users to perform searches in major European languages, Patterson said. Eventually, Cuil plans to make money by running ads alongside search results, she said, but provided no further details.

Cuil is one of a number of start-ups that are looking to introduce new technology that can change the competitive dynamics of the Web search market that Google dominates.

Earlier in July, Microsoft bought Powerset, a San Francisco-based search start-up that enables consumers to use semantic techniques -- conversational phrasing instead of keywords -- to search the Web.

Now, look what you've gone and done by bringing this search engine to the attention of TB2K....

We’ll be back soon...

Due to overwhelming interest, our Cuil servers are running a bit hot right now. The search engine is momentarily unavailable as we add more capacity.

Thanks for your patience.

Click to expand...

This is no competition for Google - the searches I tried (which ran like a 90 year old) brought back multiple Wikipedia clone sites. No duplicate content filtering whatsoever. If they didn't go through that basic step over three years in development, this will fail inside of a month

I tried it early this morning. Not impressed. Considerably fewer responses than Google on a number of search terms. I'd love a Google killer, but this is not it.

Gotta admit, not too impressed myself right off the bat.

One day old though compared to ten years for google?

The idea is sound. They may just need some time, especially considering the interest. They probably didn't expect so many hits all at once (likely in the tens of millions).

I'm still old school. I rarely use Google for searching.

I still use Altavista, especially for image searches. Google pops up the images on the results page, then when an image is selected, it opens a window where you have to click on a thumbnail of the image AGAIN in order to view. How redundant! And you have to put up with their advertising on that page too. Blech.

Altavista pops up the image and when you select that image, you go straight to that webpage. I wish they'd bring back Boolean searches though. I miss that a bunch.

-Ross

BaywaterRoss said:

I'm still old school. I rarely use Google for searching.

I still use Altavista, especially for image searches. Google pops up the images on the results page, then when an image is selected, it opens a window where you have to click on a thumbnail of the image AGAIN in order to view. How redundant! And you have to put up with their advertising on that page too. Blech.

Altavista pops up the image and when you select that image, you go straight to that webpage. I wish they'd bring back Boolean searches though. I miss that a bunch.

-Ross

Click to expand...

I like Altavista to.

I started with that back in 00 with a MAC and a crazy looking monitor. That and askjeeves.

Computing is all about advancing and/or attempting to do such. We should all embrace anyone attempting to raise the bar and try to reach that bar.

If we can't reach the bar, someone amongst us may find a better way to reach it (or, a higher bar).

I was never all that impressed with Altavista, even though I downloaded the Altavista toolbar on this laptop just to get the Babel Fish language translation button.

Before Google my favorite search engine was Hotbot. What won me over to Google was the cache feature which is useful both for seeing search terms highlighted on the pages you go to, and for sometimes retrieving pages that have been removed or altered.

Cuil is unimpressive at this point. Perhaps it will improve.

Another great search engine was Vivisimo which has changed to an even less likely name of Clusty. (http://clusty.com)

sy32478 said:

Another great search engine was Vivisimo which has changed to an even less likely name of Clusty. (http://clusty.com)

Click to expand...

Thanks! Clusty looks like it may be a good alternative to Google. Glad to see it includes the cache feature. I'll be trying it out.

By the way, while trying out Clusty, I came across http://www.searchmash.com/ which is owned by Google, and I suppose developed by Google, yet the connection between the two is being downplayed. I think I'll try Searchmash out as well. It has the advantage that previews of images, blogs, videos, and Wikipedia are offered on the same page as the page links (though sadly, no cache feature). It even has a Flash version: http://www.searchmash.com/flash/search/#home .

Hate Goggle

Both Google and yahoo seem only to bring up the most popular or commerce suported related sites. I did a search on a particular cosmetics company - the first two pages were search links to compare prices for their products. Get very frustrated trying to do any in depth searches like a topic in psychology - get more information and links to what I want by searching forums or blogs which isn't all that efficient but does point me in the right direction. Tried Cuel this am, liked what I saw - obviously still beta but have high hopes for it. Only got to do one search before site was down - shows how much need there is for alternative search programs out there.

Just tried clusty - pretty good. Thanks for the info.

No results because of high load...
Due to excessive load, our servers didn't return results. Please try your search again.

Bash Goggle all you want, but I've never seen that before on there.
When you want to search, you want it now not later.

I've got their robots blocked in the robots.txt file as sometimes they would get stuck and keep spydering a site over and over and over taking up hundreds of megs of bandwidth.

I will say the people I emailed at Cuil were very cool and responsive about their brain dead robot.

My keywords that typically place in the top 3-5 results in Google depending on time of day and my immediate prior search history, don't even register in Cuil. In fact, I didn't see any of my competitor's on the front page of Cuil, which they should be. Needs more work.

I'm with Atlan. It needs more time in the oven. I tired several searches, including some very specific ones that will bring up the desired result as #1 in Google. 1 of 10 worked in Cuil. Sort of un-cuil if you ask me.

I use AltaVista and love it.

I have trouble with all search engines (maybe it is me!), because they list at the top the number of matching items they have found, but display only half or so of those results, often less. When I use a search term pertaining to a limited subject that brings, say, 245 results, I don't want to have access limited to only the first 67.

Is there any way to overcome this limitation of displayed search results--particularly with Google, but other search engines as well?

I have actually found more accessible results using "all the web dot com" I think it is, even though I think that is equivalent to Yahoo, than I get from Google on some topics. But even that search engine limits the number of accessible results displayed.

TIA

bookworm1711 said:

I have trouble with all search engines (maybe it is me!), because they list at the top the number of matching items they have found, but display only half or so of those results, often less. When I use a search term pertaining to a limited subject that brings, say, 245 results, I don't want to have access limited to only the first 67.

Is there any way to overcome this limitation of displayed search results--particularly with Google, but other search engines as well?

I have actually found more accessible results using "all the web dot com" I think it is, even though I think that is equivalent to Yahoo, than I get from Google on some topics. But even that search engine limits the number of accessible results displayed.

TIA

Click to expand...

Google's search result indexing algorithm has a strong duplicate content filter based on the page's keyword density cloud. You can completely rearrange and paraphrase a plagiarized article and Google will pick it up and penalize the page, or in some cases the entire domain. These pages are placed in the supplemental results in the search engine results pages. Sadly, once you get stuck there it is hard to get back out - even if you rewrite new original content to replace the duplicated content, it can take months.

Thanks, Atlan, though I hardly think in the case of the search item I was investigating that this could be the case, though no doubt your explanation usually holds.

I just tried "Cuil" but it said (for the very search terms and item I alluded to) that the search phrase was too complex, and came up with no results.

I tried a shortened form, and the servers were too busy.

So, the concept may be excellent, but they'll have to iron out the bugs to make it useful.

No other search engine of all that I have tried ever came up with the notion that my search query was too complex before.

When I first started using Google, I liked it a lot because it did searches in a strict and useful Boolean order. In other words, if I typed in: gay "mountain lion", it would first come up with all pages in which "gay" AND the phrase "mountain lion" showed up.

Other search engines would display pages in which gay OR "mountain lion" showed up, so there were many more hits but much less relevant, you'd have to search page after page to get the ones which had both.

Even worse were the search engines which couldn't even handle a phrase, so that you'd get every page in which "gay" was there alone, and likewise for "mountain" and "lion". More results, but way less useful.

But I see now that Google is less Boolean and tries more to anticipate needs in a more complex "smart" way, which doesn't usually work well for me.

A search engine, by itself, generates no revenue. If they intend to "compete" with google then they'll likely end up moving in an identical direction to create cash flow: Advertising.

So anyone wanna take bets on how long it will take before the infamous "google ads" begin to be replaced by "Cuil Ads"?

don't like it

Hermit said:

When I first started using Google, I liked it a lot because it did searches in a strict and useful Boolean order. In other words, if I typed in: gay "mountain lion", it would first come up with all pages in which "gay" AND the phrase "mountain lion" showed up.

Other search engines would display pages in which gay OR "mountain lion" showed up, so there were many more hits but much less relevant, you'd have to search page after page to get the ones which had both.

Even worse were the search engines which couldn't even handle a phrase, so that you'd get every page in which "gay" was there alone, and likewise for "mountain" and "lion". More results, but way less useful.

But I see now that Google is less Boolean and tries more to anticipate needs in a more complex "smart" way, which doesn't usually work well for me.

Click to expand...

so how many gay mountain lions are there, has it become an endangered species because of this trend, cuil needs an advanced search, also google's could be improved

Gave it a good go this morning and i can say i am not a fan.........dont like the look and the info i get is not as specific or targeted as Google................

Richard said:

so how many gay mountain lions are there, has it become an endangered species because of this trend, cuil needs an advanced search, also google's could be improved

Click to expand...

That would be the phrase "gay mountain lion" ..... but I might be searching for attacks on gays by cougars! Or attacks on cougars by gays. Or a website devoted to gay men who love cougars.

I have been working on SEO for a client and with all the new factors it is really a challenge to get him ranked.

One thing that I like about google is that exact domain matches are typically first on the list; so if I google myself, my own website is displayed first and foremost.

Cuil doesn't grab my domain at all, and on top of that, shows loads of very dated (2004, etc.) crap.