RadioMatthew.com » Sacramento’s Very Own

Cuil Is Cool, But A Google Killer It’s Not

Dr. Anna Patterson used to work for Google. Now, she’s credited with creating what could be known as the “Google Killer.”

Patterson, who is credited with creating an online index of websites composed of over 30 billion web pages, launched her brain child Cuil.com this past Monday. The website received widespread media attention and interested web searchers soon overpowered their servers, inhibiting visitor’s abilities to search for terms as they would on other search engines.

Cuil.com is run by thirty employees (compared to the over 10,000 at Google) who are in charge of operations, customer service, troubleshooting and development. Cuil media spokesperson Vince Sollito says Cuil attempts to separate itself from its competition by not operating as Google does.

“Competitors try to be like Google,” Sollito said in a phone interview. He explains that Google uses popularity-based rankings to retrieve websites for searches. Cuil does not. Instead, Cuil crawls a website looking for content and quality, then returns results based on that content. It’s an alternative way of searching, Sollito said.

Four Things That Make Cuil Cool

1. The Size Of The Search: Cuil brags that it has searched and indexed more pages than it’s competitors. Three times the amount, in fact. This doesn’t necessarily mean that Cuil will return the results you want, since it bases its searches on content instead of rank and popularity. But there could be an upside to this…

2. Different Finding Methods: In the pre-Google era, search engines like Yahoo and Hotbot would list websites based on how many times a specific word appeared in that site. A page with the word “slice” eighteen times would appear higher in the search listings than a page with the same word appearing only eight times. Google changed the way search engines retrieve web listings by issuing each page a “rank,” a measure of popularity based on how many times a person clicks on this. In the post-Google era, Cuil hopes to change the way people want to search by focusing on content instead of rank or repetition of a word or phrase…

3. Privacy Of Searches: Since Cuil focuses on the content of a website, and not the popularity and rank of people who click on a link in a search result, they have no reason to grab your private information. And they don’t. Sollito confirms Cuil will never record nor store your private information, which is a huge advantage over Google which has come under fire lately for their privacy practices.

4. Organization And Structure Of Searches: Privacy is cool, and content is great, but unless you list your searches in an neat, organized way, there’s not much point in creating rivals with established, decent search engines. Cuil has a great way of displaying search results; their so-called “magazine layout” lists a link, a brief synopsis of the site, and a small graphic next to each one. The layout can be changed between two columns and three columns depending on how much real estate the searcher would like to use in listing their results.

The Not-So-Cuil Downsides

Unfortunately, many thumbnails that appear as search results in the list of web pages are incorrect. For instance, searching for KTXL, Sacramento’s Fox affiliate, brings up relevant web pages but irrelevant preview thumbnails. Among the many incorrect thumbnails are building shots of other stations in the country and incorrect reporter mugshots on biography pages. Sollito recognizes this as a problem, and says Cuil will be working within the next few weeks to fix these errors.

Another thing for Cuil to consider: When you announce a launch date, and you go live, expect heavy traffic when the press reports on your website. The day Cuil went online, search results came back empty for more than a handful of users, frustrating some users and leaving some computer afficionados wondering whether Cuil would be living up to its pronounciation. Cuil could simply not handle the amount of traffic. During our phone interview, Sollito again recognized this as a problem and quipped, “we’re rolling out more servers as we speak.”

Google Killer, Likely It Won’t Be

Many in the media credited Patterson’s Cuil.com as being the next big search engine, even a “Google Killer.” Despite Google’s criticism when it comes to privacy, nobody can currently rival the ground that Google now stands on.

Google has operated successfully on two main principles: Don’t forget the “little guy,” and be everywhere. Google’s advantage at launching as a plain-text, image-unheavy website in the late 1990s gave it an edge over Yahoo! and Hotbot. Those who still used dial-up at the time found Google to be a pleasant alternative, and then default, over search engines moving into the Web 2.0 world; while Yahoo was looking at design with pictures, games and audio, Google was looking at content in a simple way. Google’s partnerships with site webmasters brought revenue to the “little guy” as well. Google’s AdSense program allowed the search engine to produce revenue for both its site and webmasters that placed Google advertisements on web pages. Often, Google’s advertisements would simply link to sponsored ads on its own website, bringing about another powerful lead to its competition.

Google began enjoying an increase in traffic, and sites like Yahoo! and Hotbot soon realized they needed to change the way they presented search information. While those once-leading search engines scrambled to figure out how to compete with this new giant, Google began acquiring and forming partnerships elsewhere. The search engine giant acquired Deja, Writely and most recently, GrandCentral along with over forty other online services, but Google is perhaps best known for acquiring Pyra Labs, which would later spawn Blogger.com. Along with acquisitions came integration, and Google soon found itself on desktop computers in the form of in-browser search toolbars. It is currently the default search providor for Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox browsers; while Microsoft’s Windows Live enjoys a spot on Internet Explorer (though one can always change this to Google). Google’s servies are now vast, from in-browser web processing (Google Docs) to multiple call forwarding (GrandCentral), as well as the largest e-mail service in the world (Gmail, which we proudly use here on RadioMatthew.com).

Cuil’s priority as of now doesn’t seem to be integration, acquisition and competition. “Two-thirds of web searchers use an alternative to Google every month when looking for something online,” says Sollito. Cuil appears to want to simply be an alternative to the mainstream, and that’s good enough for now. But a Google “killer?” Not likely.