Google

Cuil: A cool Google killer ?

Just read this news item in Google News (what an irony )

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121721408704288951.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Cuil pronounced as Cool is suppose to be a new search engine launched (not a beta launch) which is suppose to challenge Google in the search arena. I quickly checked out this search engine  and following are a few first and quick +ves and -ves

Thumbs up

1. Explore by category: Being a techie, I use search for searching through technology. I searched for “php prado”. Prado is a web application framework for PHP. Cuil showed the search results. Interesting was the “Explore by category” sidebar (what does Cuil call it ?). It showed me other web application frameworks. This included CakePHP, Symfony etc. which were other PHP web application framework.
2. The Menubar: Again don’t know what Cuil calls it. It is the top bar below the search box on the search results page. While searching for PHP it showed me PHP Scripts, PHP Nuke, PHP Editor. Clicking on these will show results for PHP Scripts, PHP Nuke etc. This kinda helps if you want to drill down the search from PHP to PHP Scripts in particular.
3. Images in search: Looks nice (only aesthetically) to  see some images in the search results. Cuil claims to use an algorithm to fetch the most relevant image (if any) on the web page and display it along with the search result.

To be true, I don’t like to criticize a technology piece because I can imagine the efforts gone behind it. Perhaps that’s the only reason I mentioned the above points. Honestly speaking, I didn’t find the menubar of much use and images is search is definitely a no no for a quick web surfer like me.

Thumbs Down

1. Safe Search Works?: I tried switching on Safe Search and searched for “porn”. It still showed me “porn.com” in the search results. Google showed no results for “porn” with “Strict” Safe Search on.
   

   Showing porn sites and images with Safe Search On

2. Not mobile friendly: I tested it on my Windows Mobile 6 PDA. Find some screenshots below. Notice the horizontal scrollbars which didn’t go away even after switching to two column (bottom right link on the Cuil page). Images showed in the search results in mobile – occupies screen estate and adds to your mobile data transfer bill . Surprised to see that a newly launched and latest search engine, is not optimized for the today’s hot and ever growing platform. Even, if it had been the Cuilest on the mobile, it could have been COOL.
3. Erratic: While I was searching through, at times I got page saying “we didn’t find any results”. It happened quite a few times when I clicked on Page 10 (at the bottom of the page). And once when gave a space after “php” as search keyword. Hitting refresh worked at times. Not a launch quality experience, though.
4. Fastest crawler and 120 billion web pages ?: And yet I cannot see my blog (launched about 20 days back) in the search results, even with precise keywords like “shekhar govindarajan blog”. A recently launched site www.dare.co.in also did not show up.

I browsed Cuil using Firefox 3.0.1 on Fedora 9. Just FYI, “Add Cuil to Firefox” (the link towards the bottom of the search results) works.

Cuil on Mobile:

Update:

Cuil went down: While I was proof reading this post and tried to go back to Cuil to re-check some facts, the site is down (@ 1354 hrs IST) with a notice as follows:

“Due to overwhelming interest, our Cuil servers are running a bit hot right now. The search engine is momentarily unavailable as we add more capacity.

Thanks for your patience.”

Cuil back online: Noticed at 14:15 IST.

From above: “as we add more capacity”.

10 more servers gone in ?

Sent request to include this Blog: As I said above, this blog does not show up in the Cuil search results. Cuil’s FAQ page leads to this page for webmasters. Following the instructions on this page, I sent a mail to crawler at cuil dot com with the URL to this blog.

Update:

Noticed today that my blog has started appearing in Cuil. keywords: shekhar govindarajan blog

Update (Oct 3, 2008):

As of September 30th 2008, the Cuil team seems to be alive and adding new stuff (like keyboard shortcuts) – http://www.cuil.com/info/blog/2008/09/30/power-features

A quick test and found the key shortcuts for Paging and Suggestions to be working in IE 8 Beta 2, Firefox 3 (for Windows and Linux), Google Chrome (Build: 0.2.149.30). Could not get the Categories shortcut working in Linux (Fedora 9, Firefox 3.0.2). Once I hold the ALT key, I’m not able to click on the category links. This is because I’m using GNOME and in GNOME CTRL+Click moves a window.

Contrary to the earlier update, my blog has again disappeared from Cuil search results for the keywords: shekhar govindarajan blog

Update (Oct 7, 2008):

Noticed that, as opposed to sending an E-mail from a mailto link (which opened the default E-mail client like Outlook), as earlier, Cuil now has an online form to submit new website(s) to crawl. This may mean better attention to non-indexed websites because the form submit is possibly getting redirected to the concerned technicians with the appropriate subject and, perhaps, other information like source and medium of the form submit which may reveal automated (maybe unwelcomed) submits. Following is the URL to submit a site:

http://www.cuil.com/info/contact_us/feedback.php?to=crawl%20me

I resubmitted (read above) my Blog, hoping that it will get indexed, permanently, this time

Update (Nov 3, 2008): Breaking news!!! (for me, by me). Cuil now shows my blog for the keywords shekhar govindarajan blog.

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