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So apparently, there was a new search engine released today by former Google employees called Cuil (pronounced "cool"). It's generated a lot of hype, they've already raised $33 million. For those of you interested in trying it out though, don't bother. It's not the "Google-killer". Not even close.
Cuil's search quality is horrible. I'm talking 1999 pre-Google Dark Ages horrible. To quote them: "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."
To paraphrase:
1) They don't have a Page Rank algorithm (aka popularity metric), or if they do, it's a broken one at best.
2) Their relevancy algorithm doesn't look at other pages.
3) They don't mention this, but they don't even filter out duplicate results, so you'll get an entire page of results to different pages of the same website.
Google completely revolutionized and took over the search engine market for those two exact reasons. Why do you think popularity and hyperlink relevancy matters? Because there's a very good chance that your search is not unique in the world and that somebody has made the search before and linked to the desired webpage. And if nobody has looked for it/found it before, do you really think that whatever script they have running on their computers can analyze and figure out what you're looking for...
Cuil claims that when searching for more obscure stuff, their search is better. It makes me wonder -- did they even test their search engine on actual search phrases? I've done a few searches with Google and Cuil using the exact same phrases, for both common and obscure stuff. Google won every single time.
Finally, they fault Google for storing all your search information, the same way -- as say -- a credit card company stores all your financial information. Apparently, this happens to be a huge deal to some people because the world really cares about their search habits. In that sense, using Cuil is like using cash; it's a lot slower and you lose out on bonus cashback (awesomeness) points.
I bet some people are going to want their $33 million back.
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Meh seems like it sucks by the things I tried to search on it.
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This kind of thing works better the longer it's up. I wouldn't fault it too much on the day it's released. Wait a couple of months.
But then again, their features are "tabs." And "rollover definitions." The kind of features I fucking hate dealing with when I'm on a public computer that someone else installed plugins on. Gah.
They do claim the largest search index in the world. That's gotta be useful if they refine their algorithm.
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Korea (South)11582 Posts
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On July 29 2008 14:33 BottleAbuser wrote:
This kind of thing works better the longer it's up. I wouldn't fault it too much on the day it's released. Wait a couple of months.
But then again, their features are "tabs." And "rollover definitions." The kind of features I fucking hate dealing with when I'm on a public computer that someone else installed plugins on. Gah.
They do claim the largest search index in the world. That's gotta be useful if they refine their algorithm.
I highly doubt their servers can match Google's. $33 million vs. $17 billion. Google uses "selective indexing", and they recently claimed that they "see" a trillion pages, so going by Cuil's numbers, that means Google only bothers with the best 4% or so.
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It's the number 1 and the number 2 link on google. Plus you get the wikipedia link as the third link.
I'm thinking that Cuil's just another flash in the pan, but time shall tell.
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Cuil sucks in many many ways.
This isn't the first new search engine that has promised to dethrone google. They need to stop worrying about their slick layout and PR campaigns and start making relevant results appear. Google works, really really really well.
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Wow, what suck, it links to like 9999 pages of Teamliquid that don't even talk about Pro Gaming ...
'late growth spurt'
'dota'
'gaming here sux!!!'
'what type of articles/things would you like to see'
'Space in replay folder'
most of the other stuff isn't even totally relevant either...
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I went on there to test it but I didn't know what to search. I tried to define a random word but they don't have that function. That already led me to believe that Google will remain the best.
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This search engine is disappointing. The interface might be nice and useful, but I can't tell because the results suck so badly. A good test of any search engine is to put in a common word and see how useful the pages it turns up are.
So I searched for "cuil".
You guessed it, no where in sight was any reference to the very search engine being used! Try it yourself. You will find more information about "Towns And Villages In Sligo" than anything that you are actually looking for.
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EPT
