This site came up on one of the search engine forums and it could be worth a look. Cuil (COOL) is a new search engine founded by a number of ex Google and IBM employees ("Cuil" is Gaelic for Knowledge (or Hazel?)). It's positioning is that allegedly, it indexes more and faster than Google and MSN in addition to understanding the content and context of a page. The model behind it attempts to gain knowledge of what a user is ‘really’ after from their searches and they intend to continue to refine this model continuously. On launch, it had indexed 121,617,892,992 web pages – really impressive for a start-up.

The layout of search results is however a real improvement on the big SE’s. For each search, there can be around 12 results per page in a magazine style layout but with the additional feature of being able to filter by category. These catagories are automatically produced – for example, searching on a keyphrase with a geographical area presents a number of alternative regions should your results not meet the mark. One of the strongest features though is a thumbnail image alongside each description – if Cuil starts to gain market share, there’s considerable scope for Search Engine Optimisers to make the most of this image space in order to maximise their click through rates.

From a few initial searches, it’s certainly comprehensive however it’s not yet a MSN or Google beater. I didn’t find the results truly relevant however the bar is set very high. Take a look and see what you think.

Posted by Chris Haresign