While it may seem odd to note today compared to perhaps 1996 or 1997, a new search engine launched today. Cuil is a search engine focusing more on analyzing text relevance over ranking pages as might Google. Reactions seen on Twitter today were mixed such as those heard from Chad Haefele, Karin Dalziel, and Engadget’s soon to be Editor-at-Large Ryan Block.
CNET’s Rafe Needleman wrote at his WebWare site about the launch and how it was not the best. Needleman’s post showed screenshots of strange results returned by Cuil. Dalziel also linked to a screenshot she posted on Flickr.
Have you tried Cuil today? What is your reaction to the launch of this new search engine?
Cuil
It won’t let me in today, but my guess is it won’t be highly respected in France or possibly other Romance language countries:
http://tinyurl.com/6mud3x
bad search today
I tried that thing this morning and it kept freezing, wouldn’t get the next page, wouldn’t find all the reference to the.effing.librarian,…
I don’t know if it was just too many people using it, but I tried it around 10 am (EST) and it hung up several times..
but I liked the look of it… I’ll try it again later…
The lack of results creates
The lack of results creates a very clean interface!
plus
I find an unpronounceable product name is a great way to spread brand consciousness. Everyone remember that alternative to 911: 193437274840284723034726430403737294929840-4333338474?
Cuil
“No results because of high load…
Due to excessive load, our servers didn’t return results. Please try your search again.”
I’ve been getting this all day. I did get one result……nothing on which to base an opinion.
Don’t expect to find anything useful
Zero hits on NIH or Pubmed. Useless for library work. I hope the owners socked away all their google dollars in a safe bank cuz this won’t make them any money.
Very weak
I have a set of terms I’ll search for when testing out new search engines. And this one has done abysmally on that score.
The idea of changing the style from a list to a magazine style is interesting but really doesn’t work, especially if it’s just going to show the same things again and again as it did on one of my searches.
It’ll be another one of those sites that I’ll turn to after not finding anything on the main ones. You know, just in case something odd or old pops up.
Just searching for my name in Cuil for some reason pulled up a posting I made in 1996 on a literary website. Seems I’d just spent all night in the computer room. Which is interesting but not much use if I was trying to find something recent.
Not ready for prime time
It did find most of my searches. I would like a little more emphasis or bolding on the site it has located. It takes a little getting used to in its current format.
Happy Dae.
http://www.ShoeStringGenealogy.com
Not really impressed
I did a direct search for our library’s website using our web address (without the www. in front) and got nothing. When I added the www to the address our website was on the very bottom of the page. I’m not too impressed.
Not all that impressed
I typed in the terms ‘dallas stars hockey’ – and got no results. I was able to get some for the Dallas Stars but it does seem odd that I was not able to get results for those three words together. It did however give me better results than google for waste management statistics.
It’s O.K. but won’t use it much.
Since Russ Martin has been heavily in the news lately I typed in only his name and what came back said “Russ Martin Show” Nearly every entry on that first page was correct but there were a few that had pictures with them that, as far as I know, have nothing to do with Russ Martin.
I will possibly check it out from time to time but it won’t be on my favorite regular list.