San Jose (CA) - Cuil set out to conquer the search engine market with an enticing idea, but seemed to hit roadblock after roadblock since then. While the company keeps adding pages to its search index and while there will be a new data center in Europe, the search engine seems to have lost traction as quickly as it gained it. After an initial surge for zero to 0.26% usage share within one day, the usage share has dropped back to 0.00%.

Cuil recently announced that it has added three billion pages to its search index, which now totals 124,426,951,803 pages, according to the company. Cuil claims that a bigger index helps in finding more relevant results. “It also gives us more data to help our engine ‘learn’ what is on the Web and how it relates in the real world,” a company representative wrote on the Cuil blog.

The firm is also in the process of setting up a data center in Ireland, since it says that that “a fair amount: comes from Europe.

We were not able to see improvements from when the site initially popped up and revealed a search that was based on connecting topics, but had trouble to do this in a consistent way. Cuil still has problems to attach pictures to content as well.

According to Net Applications, Cuil’s usage share has dropped consistently since the service’s launch in late July. Its share dropped to 0.00% for the first time on September 21 and showed a share of 0.00% in nine of the last ten days. Cuil itself does not publish usage data of its search engine.
       

Instead of adding page indexes they should make it return relevant results

Oct 13, 2008 16:23     

Instead of adding page indexes they should make it return relevant results. I realizes the additional pages will "help" the relevance, however last time I tried Culi its searches were WAY off in the weeds - no amount of indexing will fix that. What the world really needs is not another search engine, but *specialized* search engines. Have you ever tried to search for a programing topic, which uses relatively common place words? Totally useless results... :/

hank report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +6

not ready for prime-time

Oct 13, 2008 17:06     

I tried it and didn't get any good results. I think Cuil jumped the gun on this.
Dave report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +1

@ hank

Oct 13, 2008 17:12     

That was exactly what I had in mind... 5 years ago, when I wanted to create my own search engine. But I lacked 2 things: 1 Programming experience, 2 Money. There was also the idea of user-rated web links, so you don't end up on a scam site too easy.
Andrej M. report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

huh

Oct 13, 2008 17:21     

i use it, and it happens to give me very good results i cant find with yahoo or google. it takes more searching to find them, but im fine with thaht. Ive found several good sites through it, that no amount of searching with yahoo or google would find. also their privacy is awesome, they collect no data about users.
Auri Tau report abuse vote down vote up Votes: -1

lol

Oct 13, 2008 17:53     

No one uses it because it's ugly, everyone's used to google. Either copy google but make it superior, or fail.
Mettler report abuse vote down vote up Votes: -2

I used it once

Oct 13, 2008 18:09     

The day it came out I tried it and haven't used it since. To be honest, I forgot all about it until I saw this article today.
J. Doe report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +8

Agreed with J. Doe

Oct 13, 2008 23:09     

Yup, more or less its the same thing with me... Checked it out on the day it was announced, and haven't really bothered since then...
The Returned report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

lurn2search (no really)

Oct 13, 2008 23:45     

I'll try it out; I like the privacy policy as explained and wouldn't mind having some competition around for Google. Biggest thing if you ask me, however, is getting average users to use search engines properly: Some like AND and NOT, while Google likes site: and includes* (wildcard), "phrase entry" and -notincluded. Come to think of it, I use the phrase quotes and exclusionary hyphen almost daily; site: rarely and wildcard maybe a few times a year. Who knows where I picked that up; I still haven't read Google's help page and there may be some tricks I don't know (doubtful though). It's a bit saddening to think of all the floundering about people do by clicking page after page. Part of getting better at searching is knowing when you're beat and need to try out a new direction of approach.

Edwin Herdman report abuse vote down vote up Votes: -1

Clumsy Interface,Slow,Image Irrelevant but a good startfgjhjhjhjhjh

Oct 14, 2008 03:36     

Well It is a good start as a Beginner Interface : Black it is Clumsy & vague Search Result : It shows less results as compared to google & consumes more space for the definition rather than showing other alternative results Indexing: Good & shows other organized info @the Right side of the page Image: Unable to support the text
Ephraim report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Googler

Oct 14, 2008 08:56     

I dont know why anyone wouldnt use Google. Its the best search engine out there.
Captain Snowflake report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Agree with J Doe

Oct 14, 2008 10:09     

I tried it on day one, put in a couple of searches, and well, it gave me crap I didn't even want. I did a search for monitors and got chairs. I don't want to look at desks, I don't want to look at keyboards, and most of all I don't want to look at chairs. I just wanted specific specs on a monitor. That search engine seemed like a shopping engine to me, and putting in more obscure searches came up with things of no relevance. Like a cell phone, some book shelves came up.

Devon M report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Go Google

Oct 14, 2008 12:31     

No matter what, I like Google and still be Google Fan. My home page is set to google classic. That's what I been using since google came out.
BalaGyi report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +1

sucks.

Oct 14, 2008 17:02     

sucks.
andy report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Not so Cuil

Oct 21, 2008 20:52     

I have thought about it, and there black interface isn't nice at all. It's tough on the eyes. Also... it never returns useful results. I check it from time to time out of curiosity, but I just don't think they will ever fix it. I question whether they know what users want.
chady report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0