Cuil， Google兇手？

張貼在2008年8月9日在5:19上午

在關於的一次討論以後 Google的網索引的大小邁克爾說秘密結束的Arrington ：

Google也說「但我們自豪地有所有搜索引擎最全面的索引」。

那也許是真實的今天，但它大概不會是真實的下個星期(這裡檢查然後)。 Google知道以及我們，并且所以他們今天張貼了此。

換句話說，或 TechCrunch 有一份獨家新聞.

肯定足够，在TechCrunch 7月28日，張貼了新聞一個全新的搜索引擎叫的 Cuil 哪些那天晚些時候將發射。

Cuil促進自己作為有 最大的查尋索引 任何搜索引擎， 120十億頁。明顯地相反Google有大約40十億頁一個估計的索引。

Cuil是否有什麼它採取？它能提供一些健康競爭給Google，市場支配者？

這Cuil主頁的screenshot ：

您能看， Cuil為一個光滑黑接口參加，或許儘量區分自己從Google。

Cuil結果頁接受新的方法對其他搜索引擎標準名列前茅十名單。反而結果橫跨頁在三個專欄被提出減少那個第1斑點的重要性。它真實在許多情況下有如此是相等地相關的這的多個網站是一種聰明的方法。

偶然地Cuil相當有一醜陋favicon，更壞然後Google的新的。檢查它你自己，雖然指向此使我認為其中一部Rob Cottingham的最近動畫片從噪聲對信號:

如果您認為Google是斯巴達主頁， Cuil的國王一上升它。 28是幻數為GoogleCuil摔打它是整體16個詞。

我們可能談論它永遠將或不會運作的接口，背景，原因， Danny Sullivan從搜索引擎土地精采地求和它以一個句子：

Cuil提供什麼看來是網，一個獨特的顯示介紹的一個全面索引并且湧現，當人們也許準備接受質量「處劣勢方」服務時候。

看見事實是，搜索引擎起動是一角錢一打。它似乎像我看下驚人起始許諾語義的每個第二個星期， P2P、無發送同樣的消息到多個新聞組索引，人供給動力的或社區供給動力的等等等。

現實是， Google是足够好在十年現在。它不在很大程度上是完善的，但是他們採取了頭腦和市場份額并且保留了它。

不幸第2競爭者 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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