Story time, kids! Once upon a time (July ’08) in a corner of the web far, far away, a search engine named Cuil challenged Google. While claiming to search more pages of the net than anyone else, it was found to be slow — and came under fire from critics — and quickly fell back into insignificance.
Since then, Cuil (pronounced “cool”) has tried to stand out by including supplementary search results, such as including timelines and geographical “maplines.” Now, Cuil would like to further beef up its results by including related results from social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. According to Seval Oz Ozveren, the engine’s VP of finance and business development, it’s something that hasn’t been done before.
“We are trying to leverage the information found on users social networks to enhance search results,” he told the Technology Review. “This is similar to what Amazon or eBay already does: ‘People who bought this book, also liked this one’ … nobody has actually done it to date.”
While social networking sites are currently searchable through internal means and by way of specifically tailored apps, Cuil’s method would put it out there along with whatever you’re searching for. This has some pull in two big ways: socially driven advertising is a hot new market and, especially when it comes to Twitter, breaking news and viral fads are appearing first on social networks.
The engine plans to include the new functionality in August. Whether or not it will help Cuil recapture the magic and go toe-to-toe with Google — something that Bing, which hasn’t been crushed, is arguably doing — will have to be seen.
So we know you Google. We’ve asked if you Bing. (That just sounds dirty.) Is anyone out there staying Cuil?
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ABOUT
My name is Kyle Kazak and I am the CEO and President of Kazak Media, a local Internet marketing firm that specializes in web design, local SEO, and pay per click management. We are located in Petaluma, CA, USA.
Although I’m not active in the web/SEO industry, I am business owner, and must say that I see this new approach for Cuil to be more of a temporary solution… or in other words a desperate move to battle the competition. It’s too bad that large companies like google do so much for the public without charging a dime … lol… otherwise companies like Cuil, that don’t have the pull to offer free services to everyday web surfers would become more recognized. I guess my point is that it doesn’t matter what approach you offer for businesses, other websites etc. within functionality of your engine. It matters what you do for the people that search the engine and how you differentiate yourself from the competition through services and networking capabilities free to the public. If Cuil has a chance at competing against the “the great wall of google” they are going to have to parallel them in many services, but also differentiate in their abilities for everyday internet users. That’s asking a lot, I know, but almost everyone I know (that doesn’t work in an internet based business) only uses a few search engines, and wouldn’t think about switching to anything else unless some type of hype, WOM, or free service drew them there again and again. I guess we’ll see in August how well this new feature helps promote accessibility for Cuil… If they did their homework, I should find some links from my facebook and twitter pages everyday I check my account.