Recently, a new search engine launched that was surrounded by tons of hype. It’s a Google killer! Google has it’s competitor! So much hype, indeed. Then, the bad press showed up. Cuil (pronounced “cool”) was not the search engine it promised to be.

As I read the bad press Cuil was getting, I thought to myself “It can’t be that bad. I’m sure there’s some good qualities to this search engine.” So, I decided to forget about the bad press completely and, take a look for myself. I picked out a search that I knew would be a little tough to get good results from. I picked a vanity search. Then, I picked something a little easier to search for and, decided to compare.

Before I go into my search results, let me say I really like the color scheme of “Cuil”. It’s very modern and, reaches a younger audience. The navigation on the search page leaves something to be desired though. If it were a little cleaner, it would be great! Right now, there is no real separation of results and, the page looks a bit messy. They could take a hint from Powerset in this case for enhanced navigation.

Now, my search. First, I searched “Candace Holly” on Google and Yahoo search. I know that there is a couple of other women who share my name and, I expected them to show in the search on Google. Sure enough, they did. I felt a little more special on Yahoo search. My name showed first where on Google mine was second. Yahoo loves me, maybe?

Then, I searched my name on Cuil. I was really disappointed in my results. Not only did I not find anything close to my name, I barely found anything close to “Candace Holly” period! Three pages of results. Only one of the results was relevant..it was a page from Festival of Blood Radio mentioning me. The other pages belong to women named Holly and, most of them advertise actresses nude or, a people search. Wait, what? Yes, that is the truth.

My search got easier now. I searched for the term “podcast”. I’m assuming that I am searching this term because I want to know what a podcast is and, get more information on a podcast. Google didn’t surprise me at all. The result were pages explaining what a podcast is and, the origin of podcasting. It went on to include iTunes and, Podcast Pickle on page one of results. Yahoo gave results so similar that not much of a comparison is needed between the two.

Alright, here’s Cuil’s chance to show me they aren’t living up to the bad name people are giving them. Let’s see how well it works. The first result? Podcast Alley - a directory of podcasts. I didn’t find any information on what a podcast is until halfway down the first page. That was the only result with actual information on a podcast. The rest of the results contain podcast directories, businesses and some weird podcast about robotics. Wait..what?

Considering both times I tried Cuil, my response was the typical “What the heck?” concerns me a little bit. Although Cuil shows a lot of promise; aesthetics , enhanced results and, good navigation don’t matter when your search results aren’t very good. They have a long way to go before they can ever call themselves a competitor with Yahoo or, Google.