The Google "Hot Trends" service is always a fun read, and a good way to see what memes are currently being buffeted about by news events, pop culture, and human curiosity.
Right now, the nuclear-powered hype machine promoting the launch of Cuil has helped place four related terms into the Hot Trends top ten -- cuil, cuil search, cuil stock and cuil.com. But the terms further down the page are also interesting. The 21 and 24 spots contain misspellings of the new search engine's name. Number 35 is 'cuil sucks' -- an unsurprising meme, considering Cuil's poor results for certain searches.
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Comments
Seriously, did they spend like 5 mins to come up with the name?
1) Cuil - noone knows how to spell it correctly at 1st try coz it means nothing! 1st taboo on brand marketing.
2) Overkill on pix introduces latency in search results
3) No ability to search on relevancy (past 24hrs, past week, etc)
4) It doesn't seem to be using semantic search either
Big deal that Cuil has indexed gadzillion pages. What matters are speedy and viable search results. I kicked the tire a little bit and thus far I find it unconvincing. Sorry Cuil ... your site ain't "cool" at all.
If there is a search capability that builds the relationship tree that allows one to pinpoint the root for specific news, I would see some value. So far, I haven't seen a search engine that provides such visual results.
Ciul is NOT cool.
Don't launch a service and advertise in the NY Times when you can't manage the load! Many repeated search attempts and NO answers at all! I am one of the CUIL sucks searchers!
At least put a warning on the main page or something that this is a alpha product so I won't think this is what it will always be like.
Not cool...
Personally I am tire of Google doing nothing wrong, so when I read the news this morning I was chearing for cuil but it was a big dissapointment. I had to go back to Google to find this page.
I suppose I'm use to things working - like...my garage door opener...my lawnmower...the sun...
Cuil just didn't come out of the starting gates quite right...it just kind of stood there.
Sure, I saw the eleventy billion pages it's cached or whatever. But when I type in something like 'M9250F' it SHOULD come back with the results of a computer manufactured by HP.
What I got was; "your search includes a term that is very rare. Try to find a more common substitute."
Hey, Google found 54,500 related pages...you could have at least found one or two.
A "Very rare" search would be asking it to find a page on (;lkjasdf092uroinvo8W*#$T*) +pillows -bed sheets & fire engines.
This doesn't look "Cuil" to your investors. They might ask for their 33 million dollars back...but you probably won't be able to find that page...will you.
1, cuil is NOT cool
2. cuil DOES suck... Can't find a single page about "Durango" , a very well known city in Colorado.
3. cuil sucks...
4. cuil sucks.
So, why the hype???
The number 1 search term that people are using to get to my Web site today is "Cuil sucks" http://www.alexheaton.com/2008/07/cuil-worst-search-engine-in-western.ht...
Oh, wow, I thought I was the only one typing cuil sucks...that's wild...I tried looking for a book there using keywords, to no avail, their sight telling me I was using too many words...typed in the keywords @ google and presto, found my book.
i searched for 'cuil sucks' too. I searched for 'cheap tickets to india' and the second search result was http://www.billmonroe.com/tickets/cheap_tickets_to_india.html
Nothing exists there !
The thing I hate most about Cuil is their misuse of images - they're taking random images from sites and slapping them next to whatever search result they want.
I found my original, copyrighted photos (some of myself and my children) displayed and linked to other search listing results.
I think they're just begging for copyright infringement cases. I, for one, don't want my images promoting other sites. Images are content and copyright-protected.
If a webmaster tried this, they'd be in hot water. I hope the same holds true for Cuil and they're forced to clean up their act. I won't tolerate this kind of abuse of my content and I'm sure others will feel the same.
Cuil sucks for sure! If you agree, visit
http://www.cuil-sucks.com/
and register your annoyment as a visit. Maybe then we can see a number on how many people dislike this new search engine!
@Catherine, the reality, however, is that unless you have robots.txt set to not allow spiders to crawl your site, your pictures are probably in every single search engine. Cuil is probably the rule, not the exception.
@Catherine, I see what you mean on pictures on Cuil. I tried search for Kuan and found the picture next to the result "Lee Kuan Yew: A Who2 Profile" rather inappropriate. The picture was of an adult male spanking the booty of a female bent over his lap.
I then searched "Lee Kuan Yew", "Who2 Profile" and the same picture did not show up. Rather, appropriate pictures were used instead.
Looks like its search and index engine are flawed. That said, Cuil is asking for a slander suit if it continues. Also, if you go to other pages of the results, the images seen in inital page remains! Doh!
Also, its data is out of date. Searching for "David Kuan" revealed a lnk to http://thestandard.com/people/david-kuan but the summary showed my TIS networth at around $285K. I believe that points to an index created in early May.
I have a hunch that Cuil will find it hard to raise 2nd round financing.
Cuil sucks. I wonder if the creators are under a rock somewhere?
I can't find a thing on this "search engine". For things I can find in two seconds using Google, Cuil gives me results that have nothing to do with what I'm searching. Sorry Cuil, YOU SUCK!
@Cyndy
You've missed the point. It's not about images being indexed, but how they're being used.
Yes, my images are indexed in every search engine, but they are credited and linked to my site and mine alone. Many of my images appear in the first page of Google's search results, but right underneath the image is credited to my site.
That's a huge difference that just slapping any image next to any listing without crediting the original source nor even linking to the site on which it appears.
No other search engine would dare to misuse images in that manner.
Hope that clarifies the issue.
trying to search for mt. everest restaurant since monday without any results .. cuil ineed sucks.
Try searching for pressed penny. Google results put pressedpenny.com at the top of the list, while cuil posts their graphics and zero links to them. Giving search results with other sites' graphics is a pretty cut and dried violation of copyright law. Most of their graphics don't match the search results sites.
Ah, Catherine, I see now. I saw they were linked, but didn't realize the links didn't go back to the original site.
I took the issue of image copyright infringement right to the top - I emailed Tom Costello today after I failed to receive a timely response from Cuil support.
When I checked Cuil tonight, all images from listings to which they were not originally sourced have been removed. The only images shown are those that appear on the actual site listed (which is as it should be).
That's something encouraging about Cuil - they do listen to feedback (especially when thousands of potential DMCA cases are on the horizon).
@ Catherine:
They are still infringing copyrights. Probably they took down just your images. I found about 20 or so images from my site, promoting competing sites in Cuil. Not cool.
A takedown request goes out today.
@ Mark,
No, they did not just remove my images, as all the images for the sites in my niche have now been removed. They're working on correcting the programming across their engine but the changes haven't trickled down and removed all the images as of yet (I'm not defending them, just sharing information).
@ John,
I'll be interested to see if you ever get your check. And you've given me a great strategy for protecting my copyright.
You'd think that with $52M you could afford to shell out a couple hundred thousand to acquire all the variants of the name. Creativity obviously isn't their forte. (Hey! Let's quit working for a cearch engine and start our own search engine!)
Oh well, my (KUEL.COM) traffic is through the roof, so all's well that ends well!
funny thing is, I searched "cuil sucks" using cuil, not one result. "Cuil sucks" in google yieds 1,980 results. Type in "Google sucks" in Google and I get 144,000 results.
Very interesting...
I did a search of my name. It is linked to my website and there is a photo of an olympic sharp shooter next to the link to my website? WTF? Yes there is an olympic sharp shooter with my same name but how in the hell did it get associated to my business?
Cuil is definitely going for it, but it's hard to imagine them doing anything but incremental changes to what Google's done. And even that would take years of effort.
Me.dium.com has taken a different tack. We have a full web index, but we change the results based on the surfing activity of our user base (now over 2,000,000). It's in alpha, but I'd be curious to hear your thoughts. http://me.dium.com/search
WOW what a name "CIUL"!!!
I will bet that they did not check out the meaning of the word in Polish!!!!!
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ciul
Ciul is basically same word as "chuj", but in different Polish dialect. (btw: Chuj means penis, dick in a rude way. Or a whore in some times)
Jaki ciul tam idzie! (Some dick is walking down here).
Adam to ciul bo wydymal moja Ewe! (Adam is a whore becouse he had sex with my girlfriend Eve)
Hopefully someone knowing Polish can verify the description.
It is supposed to be CUIL ... not CIUL. Either way, I still think the name stinks!
cuil suiks
I searched for alltel and it had an image of tmobile as their first result... also they page was layed out funky like it was incomplete. I actually hit refresh a few times thinking it would change.
Lameness pretty much all around.
Cuil you guys suck ! Dont ever advertise something thats not ready yet ! I am never coming back to your site !
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