The weekend might have ended, but some things are just beginning - like the life of new search engine Cuil. The new service, created by ex-Google engineers, aims to provide a more comprehensive search with better relevance than its competitors.Created by Anna Patterson, architect of the TeraGoogle search index and husband Tom Costello, as well as two other former Google engineers, Russell Power and Louis Monier, Cuil makes a lot of claims about what it'll bring to the world of search. From a larger search index to more relative results, the start-up engine seems to be pretty confident in what it has to offer. The company boasts that its search index of 120 billion web pages makesd it bigger than any other search engine, including Google.
Google responded to the beginnings of Cuil's launch by releasing a blog post announcing that its search system accesses 1 trillion web pages whilst searching for a user requests - adding the comment that it's "proud to have the most comprehensive index of any search engine"
Danny Sullivan, of Search Engine Land, said that we can expect Cuil to make the most of complaints users have about Google. By offering a tailored alternative, Cuil could attempt to coax away Google users and expand its own user base.
Cuil's creators claim their engine will show highly relevant search results that make good guesses as to why somebody is searching for a certain term, then show them suggestions at what their next step would be in an attempt to make refining searches easy. On Google, you have to type in specific keyword searches, on Cuil you just type in the area and it should suggest what you want to save time. The other issue it will be hoping to capitalise on is that of user privacy - as the service focuses on page content rather than click history, personal information or search histories will not need to be stored.
With so many ex-Google members on board it's no surprise that they will be compared to Google from the get go - but it will do people well to be patient and remember that the fledgling company is brand new and hasn't had years to perfect its search techniques out in the wild.
