July 30, 2008
July 28, 2008
No substitute.
Okay, I know I’m not a tech blog, and not even close to being a tech blog, but as someone who uses Google like it’s part of my religion, I feel like I can say a couple of things about search engines.
There was a new search engine launched today. Originally it was Cuill, but they dropped an L and became Cuil. I’m not sure, but maybe they should have launched it with a “Hey, we’re still beta!” disclaimer. The sad thing is, I don’t think they’re beta. They are just slow!
I hate to jump on the “I hate Cuil!” bandwagon so soon, but so far, well, I hate Cuil. I did a bit of experimenting with it this morning, and let me start with the “good” stuff first.
Cuil is pretty. To be honest, my first impression of Cuil was “meh,” but it’s deceptively simple. Once your results are (finally) displayed, they are done so in a very visually appealing manner. Text results are mixed with photo results that gives a result similar to magazine articles. You can choose to display your results with two or three columns, with a ’safe search’ feature off or on, and that is about the end of the options available.
Now for the bad part.
Cuil is SLOW! Yes, I realize that because they just launched today that they are probably being slammed by people just like me who want to try it out. However, if the results I got today are typical of the normal functionality of Cuil, I’ll have to say “no thank you.”
Just as an experiment, I tried four separate searches on Cuil.
Search 1: Video Vigilante
-After waiting more than two minutes for results I decided to refresh and try again.
-After a refresh, I was given a “no results” screen.
-After yet another refresh…I was given more than 29,000 results.
-As a comparison, Google returns 337,000 results.Search 2: Dan Quayle quotes
-After waiting more than 60 seconds with no results, I refreshed to try again.
-After a refresh, I noticed that the top of the screen said there were more than 5 million results, however no results were ever displayed.
-A second refresh finally yielded results.
-As a comparison, Google returns just 125,000 results.Search 3: Beatrix Potter
-This was probably the best search that I used as an experiment. There were over 600,000 results returned immediately.
- As a comparison, Google returns close to 2 million results.Search 4: Vitamin Deficiency
-The first search took close to 45 seconds and displayed no results.
-After a refresh, 147,718 results were returned.
-As a comparison, Google returns 885,000 results.
Aside from being SUPER slow, there’s a few more things that I seriously dislike.
-A tiny misspelling will yield no results whatsoever. At least with Google there is the “Did you mean:” feature. (I can’t tell you how many times a day I use Google to double check my spelling of words I’m uncertain about. That ‘did you mean’ feature helps me immensely!)
-There is no link to “cached” results. My corporate servers block a lot of websites due to questionable content. However, if I use Google to search for these websites, I can click on the ‘cached’ results and view the website anyway. This missing feature alone will keep me away from Cuil.
I’m sure there’s more to complain about, but I’m at work and I’ve had limited time to really play with Cuil. Also, all of this experimentation was done using IE. I’m curious to see if my results will be any different using Firefox.
The bottom line: Cuil might be pretty, but they will never replace Google.
p.s. Cuil misses me, too, ChrisBrogan.
