In July 2008 we were bombarded with endless hype about how this huge, more technologically advanced, Google killing search engine was being released and how it was going to give Google a run for its money…
Cuil Fails
Six months later and it’s apparent that very few use Cuil, and that it’s more likely that it will suffer a slow and painful demise in the search engine world. I have looked at hundreds of thousands of visitors across all different types of sites that I have stats access to, without seeing a single visitor coming from Cuil! Is it possible that these sites are just not optimized for Cuil’s algorithm? What happened to this supposed giant?
From looking at the site, it appears as though they put all their PR and money behind the launch, and then did nothing! Just go to their press page and you’ll see that they haven’t even updated their own news section since the release: http://www.cuil.com/info/news_press/
Did social media kill what could’ve been? Soon after launching Cuil crashed and then when it got back online the results were not relevant nor accurate. This not only discouraged its new users and potential userbase, but also got the bloggers and the social media world slamming the search engine. Was shoddy planning and irrelevant results the cause of this search engine’s failure?
Is it possible for a new search engine to emerge and grab some of big boy’s search traffic? This is a tough question, but with well over a million advertisers and with the FTC taking longer and harder looks at Google and their business practices it would appear that Google is so big that there is no way for any new search engines to ever pop up and become popular.
Actions against Google may be taken to change the current path that search is heading down, but without some drastic action I cannot see a new search engine making headway in this current search market. It is far too competitive with many features apps and just downright cool stuff being developed monthly by Google and its competitors.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Internet Faxing // Jan 22, 2009 at 7:31 pm
Great post. I remember when it launched and I`d get see pornographic photos besides totally unrelated results, or for our own website there was a picture of Hall and Oates Best of CD beside our website. Naturally I was the handsome one out of the pair
2 Cuong Huynh // Jan 30, 2009 at 3:38 pm
Bad hype actually. I think two of the biggest mistakes were marketing it as “the biggest search engine” and “Google killing”. Marketers often forget that: 1) people are smarter than given credit for – maybe Cuil is biggest, but how good is it without track record? and 2) why go head-to-head with Google as a starting strategy – don’t they know how much content Google has built over how much time, certainly not less than a few years? It was doomed from the start.
Oh yeah, extra point. The name is not cool.
3 cofofle // Feb 6, 2009 at 8:58 pm
Cuil and its image search results really suck! I think just about everyone is saying the same so I’ll leave it at that. That’s why cuil wasn’t able to get my hard-to-get-so-darned-elusive positive vote. I practically try out every new search engine that would come out and favored http://find.com over Cuil.com.
Leave a Comment