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Source link: http://blog.mises.org/8343/interesting-and-some-promise/

Interesting and some promise

July 28, 2008 by

With all the attention being given to Cuil.com, their servers are probably being tested to the max. So maybe it is not the best day to give this google rival a whirl. Still, it does show promise.

{ 4 comments }

jaqphule July 28, 2008 at 12:59 pm

Actually, it’s pretty crappy. Several search terms that I tried that give hundreds or thousands of results in google come back empty. So much for 120 billion pages indexed! (Google now claims they search about a trillion anyway.)

They should have been better ready for being slammed. They knew when the press release was going out, and should have scaled accordingly. It was verrry slow even hours ago, before most folk hit it.

Their own internal links, like to their privacy page are broken, for crying out loud!

Their output format is reminiscent of pre-google search results pages, updated for the web 2.0 era. Too busy, too many graphics, too much stuff going on. Google’s no-frills approach still wins.

I can’t figure out how these folks ever expect to make money without targeted advertising. This harkens back to the days of the .com boom. Can anyone say “underpants gnome plan”?

Finally, while Google does return pages using a formula that includes page popularity, you can’t tell me that that formula does not also include content relevance. Most often, information I need is within the first three links.

I don’t understand what all the press is about, meself.

jeffrey July 28, 2008 at 3:10 pm

Wow, eaten by the media effect.

“No results because of high load…Due to excessive load, our servers didn’t return results. Please try your search again.”

Mike July 28, 2008 at 11:52 pm

I know a lot of people are dismissing them, but the search for “Murray Rothbard” brings up some pretty cool links.

Michael A. Clem July 29, 2008 at 4:55 pm

Doing a search for a rather obscure term (Sufficiently Justified Belief) in Cuil pulled up the most relevant site right away. The same site (not being a “popular” or heavily linked site) only pulls up first in Google if I use quotes around the term to get the whole phrase.
So Cuil might indeed be a decent alternative search engine, especially when looking for obscure stuff, as we armchair philosophers and economists sometimes do.

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