Cuil Sucks Big Time

Submitted by David Grant on Mon, 2008-07-28 18:15

I got all excited to try this new Cuil search engine today but was extremely disapointed. The only thing Cuil does well is sucking. The first thing I did was to search for my name to see where on the front page it would show up (on Google I am the first hit). I was a bit surprised when I did not see my home page on the first page, second page, or third page. Maybe my site is not indexed at all. So I decided to search for one of my most popular posts, my Latex Resume Template post. Not only did it not come up but this great resource on LaTeX resume templates was also missing.

Let's look a little deeper and see how shitty Cuil really is. Try searching for "latex resume template" (obviously, remove quotes). The same search for latex resume template on google is orders of magnitude better. It doesn't take very long at all to notice the differences...

Let's look at the hits that Cuil gave us:

Now let's compare with Google's first 10 hits:

There you have it. The funny thing is that Cuil returned slightly more hits than Google (67,900 results for Cuil vs. 63,000 for Google) but it doesn't make a difference when the top 10 are garbage in one and exactly-what-you-are-looking-for in the other. Google must be laughing their asses off right now. Apparently Dvorak thinks Cuil sucks too and he's pretty blunt about it.

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Comments

Anonymous (not verified)

Mon, 2008-07-28 20:34

So you Cuil'd your name and it wasn't first on the list for CUIL.
WFW. Please cry a bit more you dingus. Search engines need time for the db to be arranged.

As more people look up your name, it will climb in importance within the CUIL structure. If Dvorak had any sense, he would have figured it out as well.

Using a test concerning Latex Resume Templates is as asinine a means to determine the viability of a new search engine as using the word 'Sex'.

If you want perfection on the first pass through for ANY program, then you were probably pissed with Apple for the Iphone apps, Windows for Workgroups 3.11 and any release of linux that has come out.

Nothing is perfect on it first creation. Even with great Focus Groups, the best Marketing people and slamming programmers, no program, apps, applet, script, widget or hack is 100%.

If you can do better, build your own search engine. If not, STFU....and stop plagiarizing Dvorak. Yes, Dvorak said it sucked, but you sure the hell didn't have to use the same word......or didn't www.thesaurus give you enough options for the word 'suck'? Oops.. its slang...damn those idiots at www.thesaurus.com for not knowing.

Anonymous (not verified)

Tue, 2008-07-29 06:00

Hey look!

It's a Cuil employee! First off, congrats on scamming the VC's. Next- worst name ever!! No one will ever refer to searching as "cuil" or "cuiling", so get your head out of your Culo.

With 33 million, I'm sure that previous poster COULD build a better search engine. With all that so-called "talent" that was recruited, this search engine is turning out to be a huge pile of crap.

And no, time will not fix it.

David Grant

Tue, 2008-07-29 08:59

For the record, I didn't notice Dvorak's article until after and I haven't even bothered to read it.

I thought searching for Latex Resume Templates was a pretty good idea of something to search for. A good search engine should not give me any results that have to do with Word Resume Templates, how to write a resume, or generic LaTeX templates. It's also a fairly specific domain, ie. there is no ambiguity over what I am looking for. 'sex' is too vague (what am I interested in? sex positions? porn? gender issues?).

As for searching for my own name, the idea was to see if Cuil had found my website at all. I was not concerned in the least whether I was first on the list or not.

As for your "nothing is perfect on its first creation" comment, I fully agree, however, Cuil should have done more testing in order to make it less imperfect before releasing it to the general public.

Sarah (not verified)

Tue, 2008-07-29 15:07

I was so excited for a new search engine when I read about it this morning. I, of course, searched my name right away, nothing that came up had any thing to do with me and one of the links messed up my computer.

Fine, the DB will learn as more people search, but if you're going to go up against Google it needs to work right away. We live in an age where people just can't wait.

Sorry 'bout that, Cuil.

Anonymous (not verified)

Wed, 2008-07-30 00:56

I typed in http://www.MyDomainName.com ... Cuil brings up an empty page claiming "no results for..."

I'm no search analyst but, c'mon, that's just pathetic.

G. Balk. (not verified)

Tue, 2008-07-29 05:03

Well, even if it is plagiarism, David is darn right about it!!!

And it would be best to lower your tone (for the other comment-er), and be more objective when criticising both an opinion and a product..

Searching for "Latex Resume Templates" is nothing like searching for "sex". "Sex" is ambiguous (stating both the act -plus anything relevant :p- and the gender) and is a plain three letter word, while the former is a-three-word-phrase (yeah, I can count!). In other words, searching for "sex" is like searching for "mouse" (which one are you looking for?). Personally, I'd expect to find some *good* results when searching for a phrase..

You say that "as more people search for the name, his name will climb in importance in the Cuil structure", giving me the impression you (think that you) know the ins and outs of that search engine. And that has nothing to do with which link I click on? Just by searching on my name, I will rise in importance? If the search engine always yields the same results (since it "thinks" they are relevant) for a given phrase, how will I rise in importance? It will always retrieve the same results! But even if it does take into account the link I click on, did you actually consider that a lot of mis-clicks will occur? Especially if the search ranking is disastrous.. Not to mention that (as studies have pointed out as well) people do not view the whole results, viewing up to the top 50 (at worst), if not much less (at best). Haven't you heard about precision and recall?

Well, anyway, if you believe that searching for "Latex Resume Templates" is not good enough, why don't you try searching for "cuil", "cuil search" or even (worse) "cuil search engine" and see what you come up with. You'd have to agree that at least the last one is not that general to expect results like "sex", wouldn't you?

Well, up to page 5 that I've seen by searching for "cuil", there is not the least inclination of the search engine (not even as a url!). What? They were so busy indexing other sites that they forgot to index themselves? Also up to page 5, "cuil search" did not yield any results for the search engine, while google ranks the www.cuil.com as first result! Sounds like an anecdote.. "cuil is so cuil, it doesn't need a self-reference" :p

Oh, and "cuil search engine" resulted in three useless, meaningless posts (with only one page of results)! Not to mention that "cuil sucks" also returns 3 useless and meaningless results (fortunatelly, not the same :p).. I guess it's because cuil is so cuil, huh? :p Yeah, right..

And to avoid being accused of plagiarism myself, cuil does not suck.. it's FTD!

Cheers,
George

Alex (not verified)

Tue, 2008-07-29 05:05

I made the obvios conclusion that it sucked without reading Dvorak's article and I am sure that David too. http://www.alexheaton.com/2008/07/cuil-worst-search-engine-in-western.html

Cliff Knight (not verified)

Tue, 2008-07-29 07:57

I just now searched for my domain, paladinmicro, and got 16 hits only 2 or 3 of which actually contain the word paladinmicro. Google finds 207, with my site www.paladinmicro.com right up top (how hard could that be to find).

They've got a long way to go yet it would seem...

Bobdoggie (not verified)

Tue, 2008-07-29 08:16

It can't even return my site in the results when I type "sovren group", which is our company name.

Alun Williams (not verified)

Wed, 2008-07-30 08:01

One of the problems with Cuil seems to be "safe search". I tried searching for "Kleinian groups" which brings up 47,600 results on Google.
On Cuil, nothing at all. However, when I turned off its safe search mode it brought up over 20000 results, the first few of which looked relevant.
It maybe they think "group" is a word with dangerous overtones.
When doing a vanity search for my own site it did find it if I used sufficiently obscure terms, but it also brought up a lot of links to malicious sites which tried quite hard to persuade me to infect my computer with fake antivirus software.
I like the format of the results, but the results themselves are dreadful. It would have been far better to wait before launching and to have chosen a less stupid name, because they are probably going to go down in history as a turkey.

steve (not verified)

Sun, 2009-02-22 11:43

Yeah I agree Cuil sucks. It's going to take a big company to compete with the time spent by the big guys like Google.

Alison (not verified)

Sun, 2008-08-03 19:49

Wow, I was simply AMAZED at the bizarro results I got from Cuil when I tried it out. I liked your post; you reviewed it similarly to the way I did: SPECIFICALLY.
My post is at http://netdudette.com/?p=174 and I used the simple word [exasperated] to demonstrate the (for now, anyway) problem with 'Cuiling'.
The results were so funny!
I hate to be negative, because I do honestly wish that there were ANY alternative to Google.
Also, on a personal level, I'm sorry for the people who are running Cuil right now... they must be having nervous breakdowns, and (amusing as it is for us) there's no point in being cruel to them... they just kinda screwed up their launch by doing it too soon without enough testing.
Maybe in time they can sort out their system. It's WAY too academic-focused right now.
Regards from Vancouver,
:-)
Alison

Anonymous (not verified)

Tue, 2008-08-05 06:08

I think it's pretty poor when you search for terms that include the word 'cuil' and it barely finds anything.

Plus the results are VERY CLEARLY fixed. Try searching for 'cuil sucks' and it finds nothing relevant AT ALL. Google finds loads of stuff.

I think I just cuiled myself, so I'll stick to Googling.

Ted Pavlic (not verified)

Mon, 2008-08-11 12:41

I'm the author of one of the Google links you listed. It's funny that you tested cuil with your LaTeX resume template. I tested cuil with my LaTeX homework template, which is the first hit on Google. Cuil links to pages that LINK to my homework template, but it doesn't link to it itself.

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