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This podcast discusses the announcement of Cuil.

Cuil is a new search engine from former Google engineers.  It has been under development for about two years.

Cuil uses a different approach to indexing.  Out of the gate, they claim to have indexed 120 billion web pages. 

Cuil is indexing content based on content and displaying other relevant keyword.  Their monetization strategy is not apparent.

They are using a semantic approach by helping the user with similar keywords.  For many search results, cuil displays a table to the right with suggested categories to consider in the search.

Cuil is displaying results in a magazine style using three columns across.  Each page is not limited to 10 listings.  Most listings displays a graphical image such as a company logo.  Graphical images are being pulled by their algorthm.  Cuil makes being on the first page even more compelling. 

From a user experience standpoint Cuil seems friendly and easy to use. 

It remains to be seen in the long run if Cuil will gain market share.  Google is the king of search engines. 

We are focused on understanding the impact of Cuil on search engine optimization (SEO). 

Will Google legally challenge Cuil?

Stay tuned for more on Cuil.

What do you think of Cuil?

Tags: Cuil, cuil.com, Google, search engine, SEO

Two highly respected former Google engineers have launched a new search engine called cuil, pronounced “cool.” 

I don’t know for sure, but perhaps the name is a reference to the more visually appearing interface design.  You be the judge. Apparently, this new search engine project has been under development for a couple of years. 

Cuil claims to have indexed more than 120 billion web pages. Google doesn’t disclose how many pages their index contains. 

Cuil’s indexing method claims to index web pages based on semantic methods considering how keywords are related to each other.  Cuil lists results three across a page, rather than ten down like Google.  Each listing also contains more summary text than Google and also includes an image which is often the logo of a business if the listing is a business. 

Cuil is accepting submissions for websites which it has not crawled.  It is still a little buggy.  When searching on a keyword phrase we track for a client, I found the client’s listing on the first page, just the same as Google.  Then, a few minutes later cuil said it didn’t find any listings for the same keyword phrase.

I wonder how they can launch a competing search engine to Google without violating a non-compete, or intellectual property copyrights. Let’s watch closely over the coming days, weeks, months to see if Google takes any legal action. 

I’m sure we’ll be writing about cuil more in the future.  We’ll watch it to monitor the impact it has on the search industry, and the extent to which we need to do SEO for cuil for Find and Convert clients.

Tags: Cuil, search engine, search industry, SEO