Hiring the Internet

Everyone can learn a marketing lesson from the launch of new search engine, Cuil (pronounced “cool”).

A victim of its own hype, Cuil has become the target of a sizeable media backlash, supported by the web everyman, thanks to Youtube comments and blogs galore.

Expectations were so high that it was no wonder that many were disappointed and negative. What happened?

Cuil’s Good Points

First of all, Cuil is not all that bad. For example, it has strong branding, although its homepage’s black background seems like an obvious counterpoint to Google’s white one. It also boasts the largest index of websites, one even larger than Google’s: a whopping 120 billion! Their privacy policy also claims that they do not store IP addresses or users’ search activity.

“Google Killer” and Other High Expectations

But even with these nifty features, not every search engine nabs the spotlight the way Cuil did. Words like “Google Killer” (as if Google were some sort of dragon) kept popping up in news coverage about Cuil. Where did that come from? The main reason was probably due to the fact that the people behind Cuil were ex-Googlers. Yes, they were defectors!

With that in mind, everyone was curious to see how Cuil measured up against Google. At this point, Cuil arrived at a disadvantage. Every new technology product has its bugs, and every company must learn how to recalibrate as it gathers experience and knowledge. But in this case, everyone wanted a perfect, shiny search engine straight out of the box.

Shortcomings

Monday, July 28, 2008 was Cuil’s launch date, which did not perform so well. All that media coverage intrigued so many users that the site actually crashed for a while. And then the reviews came.

Many people actually used themselves or their websites for test searches, and they were often disappointed to find nothing in those 120 billion pages. Others mocked Cuil’s confusion over the use of periods in searches. (Our own Visible Shops blogger attempted a search on “D.H. Lawrence” and received no results. It was only when she deleted the periods that the moody English writer finally showed up in Cuil’s pages.) The results pages’ three-column layout, while attractive at first, is cumbersome for web readers. You can opt for a two-column layout, but it is decidedly ugly and still difficult to skim. It also lacked one convenient feature that Google is known for: search by Image, Maps, News, etc.

The most frequent point of criticism, however, was the weak relevance of Cuil’s search results. For reviewers, many keyword searches yielded perplexing results while omitting others that were obvious and highly relevant. This was no Google Killer.

Too Soon to Tell

However, it has been only a week for our new upstart startup. If Cuil works out its bugs, refines its algorithms, and come up with a better results page layout, it may begin to give Google a run for its money. This may be a lesson to other companies who are launching something new: Advertise the greatness of your product, but act with caution when comparing yourself to a giant corporate rival!

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