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The latest SE news is the release of Cuil, a new search engine developed by some ex-Google employees. The search engine was supposed to compete with Google, and the launch was definitely well-hyped.

Cuil claimed to have more sites indexed than any other search engine in the world, and that their results were going to be some of the most relevant available anywhere. This much-hyped launch certainly had people watching. Many were hoping for the fall of the mighty Google to this fledgling competitor.

Alas, Google’s demise doesn’t seem eminent at this time – at least not at the hands of Cuil. It seems that Cuil fell far short of expectations, and its launch fizzled quickly. It seems the site just didn’t live up to expectations and fell far short of the hype surrounding it.

It seems one of the biggest issues they had was the fact that they were a bit of a stealth launch. They let reporters and bloggers know they were launching, but they didn’t seem to allow any beta testers. This led to seriously flawed search results which some went so far as to call totally laughable.

One of the unique features of Cuil is the fact that they display a picture beside each listing. This picture is supposed to be representative of the page found in the search results, but in most cases it seems to be a completely random image that has nothing to do with the site or the search term. This could be a cool feature, but it’s seriously lacking.

The general consensus is also that Cuil’s overall search relevancy just isn’t up to par, either. Some people claimed to find no search results at all for certain relatively popular phrases on launch day, and many said they found top 10 results that made use of outdated tactics like keyword stuffing.

As much as many people had hoped for someone to come along and finally dethrone Google as the king of search engines, Cuil just doesn’t seem to have what it takes. (At least not yet!)

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Mary Murtha

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