by Alfred F Waltheson DVM

Created on: July 29, 2008

The new web search engine, "Cuil.com", though it does have some innovative ideas, in its present form is no real threat to Google.

I saw a reference to Cuil on the news site Slashdot.com yesterday, and visited the search engine to try it out. The search page is similar to Google - there is no cluttering of the homepage with extraneous information, just the word "Cuil", a search bar and a button that says "Search". There are also links, in a small unobtrusive font, to Cuil's privacy policy and to a writeup about the Cuil itself.

One thing that is unique about Cuil is the fact that it sorts search results into categories, if you type in the word "Ford" it will categorize the results under "Ford Mustang", "Ford Focus", "Ford Explorer" and so on. The categories can be accessed by means of tabs across the top of the results window - or you can click on "All Results" to bring up results from every category. When you type words into the search box, a drop down list of the categories that will be returned appears below the box and you can click on one of the options to retrieve results from only that category.

Search results are displayed across the page as three columns in a pleasing format. A picture is displayed with each result - and usually the picture matches up with the subject pretty well. Now and then a picture that appears to be completely off topic will show up - but more than 90% of the time the association is good.

Cuil also offers an option, "Safe Search", that if selected attempts to filter out pornography and other objectionable content.

Why, with all these features, is Cuil not a threat to Google? The main drawback, that I could see, was that the search routine did not seem to me to be as good as Google's. It works well for one word queries, but if you enter something more obscure like "ditch liner irrigation" the quality of the results returned seem to be significantly below that of the results returned by Google. (I may be somewhat biased, having used Google for many years I am experienced in getting good results out of Google, but with many consecutive attempts I was unable to get results as good as the ones I could easily get with Google.) The quality of search results is paramount, if the results are not as good it will be very hard for Cuil to make up for it with by sorting those results or with a prettier web page.

Cuil also lacks many of the features that some of us have come to depend on with Google - such as the automatic spell checking ("did you mean pemphigus" when you type in pemfagus), the way the search engine turns into a calculator if you type in "1+1" and other similar features. These are simple to add, and I imagine they are likely to show up at some time in the future.

Google has had many years to perfect its search routine and Cuil is just starting out. If Cuil is able to improve its search routine in time there may come a day when it does become a serious threat to Google. For now, however, I'll be sticking with Google.

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