Cuil， Google凶手？

张贴在2008年8月9日在5:19上午

在关于的一次讨论以后 Google的网索引的大小迈克尔说秘密结束的Arrington ：

Google也说“但我们自豪地有所有搜索引擎最全面的索引”。

那也许是真实的今天，但它大概不会是真实的下个星期(这里检查然后)。 Google知道以及我们，并且所以他们今天张贴了此。

换句话说，或 TechCrunch 有一份独家新闻.

肯定足够，在TechCrunch 7月28日，张贴了新闻一个全新的搜索引擎叫的 Cuil 哪些那天晚些时候将发射。

Cuil促进自己作为有 最大的查寻索引 任何搜索引擎， 120十亿页。明显地相反Google有大约40十亿页一个估计的索引。

Cuil是否有什么它采取？它能提供一些健康竞争给Google，市场支配者？

这Cuil主页的screenshot ：

您能看， Cuil为一个光滑黑接口参加，或许尽量区分自己从Google。

Cuil结果页接受新的方法对其他搜索引擎标准名列前茅十名单。反而结果横跨页在三个专栏被提出减少那个第1斑点的重要性。它真实在许多情况下有如此是相等地相关的这的多个网站是一种聪明的方法。

偶然地Cuil相当有一丑陋favicon，更坏然后Google的新的。检查它你自己，虽然指向此使我认为其中一部Rob Cottingham的最近动画片从噪声对信号:

如果您认为Google是斯巴达主页， Cuil的国王一上升它。 28是幻数为GoogleCuil摔打它是整体16个词。

我们可能谈论它永远将或不会运作的接口，背景，原因， Danny Sullivan从搜索引擎土地精采地求和它以一个句子：

Cuil提供什么看来是网，一个独特的显示介绍的一个全面索引并且涌现，当人们也许准备接受质量“处劣势方”服务时候。

看见事实是，搜索引擎起动是一角钱一打。它似乎象我看下惊人起始许诺语义的每个第二个星期， P2P、无发送同样的消息到多个新闻组索引，人供给动力的或社区供给动力的等等等。

现实是， Google是足够好在十年现在。它不在很大程度上是完善的，但是他们采取了头脑和市场份额并且保留了它。

不幸第2竞争者 雅虎! has some stigma from being the old search engine of the 90s and its image has been hurt even more by the recent Microsoft takeover attempt and proxy battle with investor Carl Ichan.

Windows Live Search is also getting close to Google in terms of accuracy and has had vast amounts of resources sunk into the service yet suffers somewhat from being associated with Microsoft and bad marketing (MSN, Live… what?).

So Why is Cuil any different?

Considering the huge combined resources of Yahoo and Microsoft have done little to nothing to stop the rapidly expanding Google how wise is it to expect a little start-up like Cuil to compete with the giant?

Well, Cuil has some pretty impressive profiles behind the service. From the New York Times:

In her two years at Google, Anna Patterson helped design and build some of the pillars of the company’s search engine, including its large index of Web pages and some of the formulas it uses for ranking search results.

Not just Anna, Cuil also includes the founder of AltaVista Louis Monier, Tom Costello who was involved with IBM’s WebFountain project and Russell Power who worked on the TeraGoogle project. Anna’s husband and several additional ex-Google employees are also part of the team.

This is an impressive team of developers and gives substance to their statement of creating the most relevant search engine.

The biggest issue I have seen with Cuil’s announcement concerning their search engine is one which was also pointed out by Danny Sullivan:

Seeing Cuil trot out size figures is incredibly disheartening and a step backwards, not forwards. Time better spent on other things (such as measuring the RELEVANCY of the results) will instead get consumed by those trying to count pages. Without even running queries and trying to perform comparison counts

I really don’t care how big a search engine index is when I know, just as you know, that go beyond page 10 on any web search and you’ll find nothing but spam and Chinese websites. All I care about is how accurate the results on that first page are.

I decided to test out several of the most popular search services to see how they compared to each other and newcomer Cuil.

For this test I have used the phrase “shipping seven”. Shipping Seven refers to the development process of the next version of Microsoft Windows (Windows codename: seven). It’s a good phrase as it’s pretty obscure and will really test how relevant results are between search engines.

Here are the results:

Cuil

10% Relevant

Cuil had the grand total of 1 relevant result, admittedly it was at the first position, however I expected it to do a little better then that.

Google

100% Relevant

All 10 of Google’s first page where directly relevant with result number 1 going to the controversial Shipping Seven blog itself, which in fact it even has a mini feed of the latest 3 items as you can see in the screenshot.

Yahoo!

50% Relevant

A total of 5 links scattered down the page, the Shipping Seven blog makes it to number 1. A decent result, but also indicative of why Yahoo is trailing Google.

Windows Live Search

60% Relevant Results

Live Search does marginally better then Yahoo! and provides 6 relevant links. Note that Live Search has 6 relevant links over the first 7 results, Yahoo! has only 4 relevant links over the first 7.

Ask

0% Relevancy

Ask actually had 4 relevant results on the front page, but I’m giving it a 0% due to the horrendous design.

Here is what greeted me after submitting my search:

That’s right, not a single actual search result in view, you have scroll down for that. Instead I get a full page of advertisements and an annoying sidebar suggesting search terms. The top right side of the page is the ‘hottest’ area, the place we see first… how filling it up with a sidebar only a few people may use is considered smart I cannot understand.

As If space wasn’t constricted enough the Ask search bar is an overlay rather then a header at the top of the page.

Sure, this is just one search term I’ve demonstrated here but I think by looking at these results we can see that Google has little to fear yet. That said, Google has spent a decade and millions of dollars working on their index, Yahoo and Microsoft potentially have as well.

Cuil is just a few days old and has made an impressive start; I look forward to seeing their progress in the search space. What are your thoughts on Cuil after playing around with it for the last few weeks?

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