Cuil vs. Google [Archive] - OverClocked ReMix Forums

Liontamer

07-29-2008, 07:33 AM

Aight, so for anyone that's not seen yet, new search engine hotness Cuil (http://www.cuil.com/) ("cool") officially launched yesterday, founded by some ex-Googlers.

Did some searches on it though, and, at least right now, it sucks.

From their info (http://www.cuil.com/info/) page:

Rather than rely on superficial popularity metrics, Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance. When we find a page with your keywords, we stay on that page and analyze the rest of its content, its concepts, their inter-relationships and the page’s coherency.

Then we offer you helpful choices and suggestions until you find the page you want and that you know is out there.

Let's take VG composer Tim Follin (http://www.cuil.com/search?q=%22Tim%20Follin%22&sl=long) for example. I guess I shouldn't complain, since OCR is the first result...and the sixth...and the tenth. :lol: But Cuil pulls up images it's obtained from God knows where in order to spice up the results, and the images frequently have jack to do with anything and aren't obtained from the resulting site in the first place.

Half the time, it doesn't even pull up useful stuff. It ends up giving top results from a lot of shitty, out-of-date sites that just spider Wikipedia.

I'm sure they're going to work on improving the search results, but I gotta say, if it's gonna stay like this vs. Google's "reliance on superficial popularity metrics", give me the superficial popularity metrics any day.

Mirby

07-29-2008, 07:50 AM

Yeah, I don't really like the layout and results and stuff. Maybe it will improve with time, but right now I'll stick with google.

Bahamut

07-29-2008, 08:00 AM

I read about this as well (and the complaints). I'm with ya, google works pretty well for me still.

I-n-j-i-n

07-29-2008, 08:24 AM

I think competition is good. Also, what's the point of critiquing a brand new search engines? They are almost never good when they first start. Google was horrible in its first year or so.

Jam Stunna

07-29-2008, 08:24 AM

Ha, I just searched "Super Smash Bros. Melee" and got no results:

http://www.cuil.com/search?q=Super+Smash+Bros.+Melee

Liontamer

07-29-2008, 08:33 AM

I think competition is good. Also, what's the point of critiquing a brand new search engines? They are almost never good when they first start. Google was horrible in its first year or so.
That would be quite the valid point if the company's hype wasn't that it was a better search engine than Google from day one on account of indexing more pages. Of course, we haven't heard anything official from Cuil yet reacting to this disaster, but they've pretty much have to say what you just said in order to save any face now.

Jabberbox

07-29-2008, 08:35 AM

I think cuil has some potential, but it will take a lot of work to get it running like it could.

StarZander

07-29-2008, 08:42 AM

Ha, I just searched "Super Smash Bros. Melee" and got no results:

http://www.cuil.com/search?q=Super+Smash+Bros.+Melee

If you remove the period it will find a shitload.

Yeah, searchengines are like wine. They need to age before using.

Strike911

07-29-2008, 09:06 AM

... waiting to invest...

1337 1

07-29-2008, 12:26 PM

I'm not much getting my hopes up; many search engines have tried to provide competition, but without much success. That said, the internet is a place of many firsts; only time will tell.

MechaFone

07-29-2008, 12:35 PM

I searched high and low for a Super Mario RPG rom on Yahoo. I was just about out of hope when I thought "Wait a sec...maybe, just maybe, Google will have one if I look hard enough..." First page, first article, there it was. Google will forever be my greatest love.
Screw that...quil...cueel? Yeah, like that'll catch on.

starla

07-29-2008, 09:05 PM

I agree, the name is kind of a loser from a marketing standpoint. When you have to explain how to pronounce it you lose steam imho. I really don't like the layout either - it looks like a wall of advertisements to me. I will say though that the predictive text is nice as well as having the option to click to the next page without having to scroll all the way to the bottom.

Jago

07-29-2008, 09:12 PM

Aight, so for anyone that's not seen yet, new search engine hotness Cuil (http://www.cuil.com/) ("cool") officially launched yesterday, founded by some ex-Googlers.

Did some searches on it though, and, at least right now, it sucks.

Agreed. I tried it from work today, and I was not impressed. Most of the images that came up had nothing to do with what I was searching. Maybe Cuil will improve over time, but Google is my top pick for now.

Broken

07-30-2008, 03:32 AM

So, how long until requests for information and or apps get a mandatory "www.cuil.com" response?

Sounds like a while from what I'm hearing.

The Xyco

07-30-2008, 03:54 AM

All it needs is a jazzy marketing campaign and site will be golden. Mark my words.

Gollgagh

07-30-2008, 04:35 AM

Ugh

I hate the layout

I hate multiple (equal attention) columns in websites

I just tried it and it literally gave me a headache just looking at it.

The idea behind it is neat, I guess, but right now it's completely unusable to me as it is.

po!

07-30-2008, 04:50 AM

If you remove the period it will find a shitload.

Yeah, searchengines are like wine. They need to age before using.

it doesn't work for any words that end with periods, like any abbreviations. like dr. or ave. or bros. ... pretty lame

linkspast

07-30-2008, 05:18 AM

SoulinEther

07-30-2008, 05:32 AM

Who knows why we need another, but a search of soulinether and yousef reda proved that Google knows me better. However, Cuil is obsessed with a youtube video I uploaded, and so are a ton of other useless sites as well.

The Xyco

07-30-2008, 05:43 AM

um... Why?
Could someone tell me why there is a need for another search device? Maybe I just dont understand search engines, but Google works fine for me and about everyone else out there... and I can say it aloud with out a problem.. I guess I can see some potential for business but.... really..
Google has roughly 40-45% of the market share regarding search engines.

That's one company, one process, one algorithm, one idea assuming a commanding lead in the market.

It's pretty easy to chip away at something that large without being noticed. By the time you are a threat, it's too late to stop you.

Not saying that Cuil is in any position to de-throne Google anytime soon, but I would assume this is the reasoning behind it's founders.

I can guarantee you'll start to hear about it more from various alterna-geeks. Google is everyone's friend -- some people will go against it just for the sake of being different. You put a good marketing strategy behind that, and you could settle in quite nicely.

suzumebachi

07-30-2008, 05:47 AM

Bigfoot

07-30-2008, 05:54 AM

... waiting to invest...

Seriously. I remember when google was only 100 a share, now it's like 600 or whatever. :P I haven't checked in a while.

SoulinEther

07-30-2008, 06:18 AM

Yeah I don't think I like this search engine.

I decided to search for myself just to see what it came up with. The very first result was a page that included my full name, my home address, my home phone number, my age, my last job, and a map with accurate directions to my house. You know, just in case someone wanted to kill me in my sleep. I'm not usually a paranoid, or even very private person, but you gotta draw the line somewhere.

Also it seems to be really inconsistent because I just searched again and now the first result is my OCR remixer profile.
So you're telling me I can type that name right there and find out where you live?

Edit: Damn. I don't see it. (well, it's not like i was going to visit you.. .......yes...well-played, yousef..... must get him off of our tracks... and ourselves some donuts... and ... what's that? .....but i've grown so fond of agua de jamaica........ fine, you get the horchata and i'll take the jamaica... no, i won't let you have a sip this time.....pay attention! you're looking foolish right now.)

Ajax

07-30-2008, 09:18 AM

I did a search for "cuil", and was given a geography lesson, however in the first 13 pages of search results I skimmed over, not once did I see the webpage of the search engine itself listed.

I mean, I know what I'm going to find when I google Google...

If your going to start a search engine, then you might as well list yourself...

EDIT:
Cuil is an old Irish word for knowledge. For knowledge, ask Cuil.

Ah, I suppose that's why I got the geography lesson.

Mirby

07-30-2008, 09:21 AM

I have concluded based on the posts about this from 2 different forums that Cuil blows chunks.

MechaFone

07-30-2008, 12:04 PM

Okay, so I have noticed one neat little thing about cuil. When I typed in my name next to overclocked remix, it posted a bunch of my posts here. The neat thing is, it displayed my post rank I had at the time. I saw Megaman and Goomba. But when I clicked on the link, it had my present name, Kraid.
It's not really that important, but it was kinda neat.

Kizyr

07-30-2008, 03:39 PM

Has anyone else found Cuil to be horribly slow?

I'm willing to give any other search engine a test-drive and the benefit of the doubt at first. I mean, I've liked Google since almost the beginning (shortly after snap.com I think), and it's just gotten better; so another search engine might do it. Not to mention that it's still free to use any search engine you want.

But, searching Cuil was ridiculously slow for me. I just tried a couple of words here and there and, besides the results not being as useful as what Google would give, it took 10 times as long for any individual search to go through. Maybe I'll try it again, but for now I'll stick with Google.

I agree, the name is kind of a loser from a marketing standpoint. When you have to explain how to pronounce it you lose steam imho. I really don't like the layout either - it looks like a wall of advertisements to me. I will say though that the predictive text is nice as well as having the option to click to the next page without having to scroll all the way to the bottom.

Now that you mention it, that's probably why the layout irritates me so much. The layout was original, I'll grant that. But when you make results look like advertisements, people will tend to treat them like advertisements--i.e., they'll ignore them. KF

sgx

07-30-2008, 04:09 PM

So, how long until requests for information and or apps get a mandatory "www.cuil.com" response?

Sounds like a while from what I'm hearing.

Just cuil it. :D I can't wait to tell people to cool it.

edit: how the hell does it not come up with anything for "sgx music"???

The Pezman

07-30-2008, 08:53 PM

All it needs is a jazzy marketing campaign and site will be golden. Mark my words.
Just like what Google did!
Google is everyone's friend -- some people will go against it just for the sake of being different. You put a good marketing strategy behind that, and you could settle in quite nicely.
...or you could read their mission statement. They have to have some reason for going against Google. Personally, I like what they aim to achieve. On paper, anyway.

As for the site itself, the search engine needs a fuckton of work, but I do enjoy the format in which searches are returned. Simple. Straightforward. Not too much unrelated text. Making use of the widescreen. It looks nice.

Sinewav

07-30-2008, 09:45 PM

So why bother releasing this to the public when it still needs so much work? It's not like they were on some strict deadline for a release date, were they?

Nohbody

07-30-2008, 09:56 PM

Why would anyone launch a search engine with google on the prowl? It will never work, I give these ex google guys a week before they kill themselves in shame.

Mirby

07-30-2008, 10:07 PM

Why would anyone launch a search engine with google on the prowl? It will never work, I give these ex google guys a week before they kill themselves in shame.
qft Harsh but true.

Sinewav

07-30-2008, 10:35 PM

http://www.cuil.com/search?q=cuil and http://www.cuil.com/search?q=cuil.com
============================vs.=================== =============
http://www.cuil.com/search?q=google and http://www.cuil.com/search?q=google.com

I don't say this often but...

FAIL.

Asaudan

07-30-2008, 10:58 PM

But Cuil pulls up images it's obtained from God knows where in order to spice up the results, and the images frequently have jack to do with anything and aren't obtained from the resulting site in the first place.

I entered 'Destructoid' and the last result on the first page had a picture of a blowjob sitting next to it. I didn't click on that result to find out what the relevance was, but I did notice that destructoid.com was nowhere on the menu.

These guys are really pushing the envelope outside the box.

jayc4life

08-02-2008, 01:16 AM

So why bother releasing this to the public when it still needs so much work? It's not like they were on some strict deadline for a release date, were they?
Free beta testing from the general public, then the developers maybe troll popular web forums (like this one) where they're mentioned, see what we think about them and secretly work on a way to improve based on our inadverdent feedback, I assume.

Antipode

08-02-2008, 01:27 AM

Why is the media and everyone so interested in this? I've been seeing stories and threads and articles about this everywhere. So it's just another crappy search engine. There's a million other crappy search engines too. Why is this one suddenly such a hot media item with all this speculation about whether or not it will dethrone google? It's new so all the attention can't be based on popularity - and according to you guys, it's not the quality either.

jayc4life

08-02-2008, 01:35 AM

Why is the media and everyone so interested in this?

Because it's ex-Google workers trying to one-up their old bosses. Thereby, an insurrection within the company could harm shares. And now, with Google being instated to dictionaries worldwide meaning "to search for something on the internet", surely it means Google's ultimately won and should have hoovered up all other search engines at this stage,

Kizyr

08-02-2008, 03:22 AM

Free beta testing from the general public, then the developers maybe troll popular web forums (like this one) where they're mentioned, see what we think about them and secretly work on a way to improve based on our inadverdent feedback, I assume.

That sounds like the only reasonable basis for doing this. It gives a pretty good corpus of more realistic searches. If that's the case, the first kinds of results they'll work on improving will be results for things people search for the most often.

That might explain Asaudan's unexpected blowjob result. KF

Zephyr

08-02-2008, 03:47 AM

Actually, from what I can tell, cuil is improving rather quickly, I'm sure it checks what people are searching for and then will look for things relating to some of the more searched things. I actually like the layout and the category narrowing, and the type suggestions. All of the things you've said that don't work, worked fine for me, it must be learning fast. It does seem to have a problem with spaces and punctuation, I searched for thasauce and found it fine, tha sauce didn't find anything relavent. Same with vgmix and vg mix.

It has potential, they're probably waiting to advertise a lot until it's been beta'd by the public and is sufficient enough to make a good impression, although I hope they make it very clear how it is pronounced, its useless to have a 'cool' (haha, a pun) name if everyone is too scared to talk about it for fear of pronouncing it wrong. I'll be keeping an eye on it.

Also, did someone say there was an image search? Because I can't find it, and searching for it yields nothing.

Jago

08-02-2008, 04:30 PM

And in the Houston-We-Have-A-Problem department:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/01/cuil_apology/

Dyne

08-02-2008, 05:23 PM

Aight, so for anyone that's not seen yet, new search engine hotness Cuil (http://www.cuil.com/) ("cool") officially launched yesterday, founded by some ex-Googlers.

Did some searches on it though, and, at least right now, it sucks.

From their info (http://www.cuil.com/info/) page:

Let's take VG composer Tim Follin (http://www.cuil.com/search?q=%22Tim%20Follin%22&sl=long) for example. I guess I shouldn't complain, since OCR is the first result...and the sixth...and the tenth. :lol: But Cuil pulls up images it's obtained from God knows where in order to spice up the results, and the images frequently have jack to do with anything and aren't obtained from the resulting site in the first place.

Half the time, it doesn't even pull up useful stuff. It ends up giving top results from a lot of shitty, out-of-date sites that just spider Wikipedia.

I'm sure they're going to work on improving the search results, but I gotta say, if it's gonna stay like this vs. Google's "reliance on superficial popularity metrics", give me the superficial popularity metrics any day.

"Sucks" doesn't even begin to cover it. I ran the same search, and saw results for things not even remotely associated with Tim Follin. They need to find some other way to spend their time.