Cuil.com is up and running - and it's set itself up to challenge Google, claiming an even bigger index of websites than Google. In fact, Cuil is boasting to have indexed THREE times more websites than any other search engine (Google or otherwise). That's over 120 billion pages.
For those writing for the web, cuil.com should be interesting to watch because it's also claiming to be checking content and thereafter ranking sites in search engine results differently than Google does. Does cuil care about keywords and key phrases and site maps? I don't know that they do .... according to PC Mag's Chris Gampat, Cuil "... ranks pages based on relevance, rather than popularity based on link analysis, as Google does, and analyzes the context of the page and the concept behind queries."
How does it work? Well, I've done a couple of test searches on Cuil, Google, and Yahoo and if I were Google or Yahoo, I wouldn't be worried just yet. Cuil didn't give me what I wanted in the top 10 results by a longshot.
Not a quality result in any of my test runs. For example, when I searched for my own name, I got a lots of obits, along with real estate commercial listing info for a woman who shares my name and lives in a different state, and other skipping stone type of data.
Same thing when I did a couple of other searches, looking for topical stuff. Like "Caylee Anthony" - first page of search results is giving me stuff on Caylee Monique McCosker's obit, and something called "the ultimate KAYLEIGH eliminator." Right. NOTHING on the first page about the missing 3 year old the entire country is talking about today.
Not helpful, and not impressive. Maybe Cuil is new, and this will change.
I do like Cuil's result format. Three column, paragraphs, the occasional image. That's nice.
More on Cuil:
PCMag - Hands On with the New "Cuil" Search Engine
PCWorld - Cuil Stumbles Out of the Gate
Computer World - Ex-Googler's Search Engine Draws Fanfare, but testers prefer Google
The Motley Fool - Will Cuil Kill Google? Probably Not