Wow, How Did Cuil Get So Much Publicity on Day 1?!
An alternative search engine launched last night. It's called Cuil and, if you're a reader of tech blogs and/or the New York Times, you've no doubt been hammered with the news all day. We checked Cuil out and had a mixed user experience, as did most of the commenters in the post. So it's a pretty average search engine, although like many before it Cuil claims to be a Google competitor. But why did it get so much PR upon launch? The results showed that Cuil is no different to the hundreds of alternative search engines we track every day.
One reason for the feeding frenzy among media, new and old, is that Cuil's founders are ex-Google employees.
Another reason is that the founders made some big claims about challenging Google. The New York Times article states that Cuil promises to be "more comprehensive" than Google and give users "more relevant results".
Having ex-Googlers at the helm and making big claims is nothing new. They were also coming out of stealth mode, which helped the PR. But perhaps what made the difference this time was that some key industry pundits made some big claims themselves about Cuil.
Danny Sullivan, who runs SearchEngineLand and is generally considered to be the most respected search blogger around, is quoted in the NYT as saying: "This is the most promising thing I've seen in a while". He did qualify that by saying: "Whether they are going to threaten Microsoft, much less Google, that's another story." And his own post on SEL goes deep into this very question - well worth reading.
The big claims of Cuil were expounded on in the official PR. The title of the company's press release says it all: Cuil Launches Biggest Search Engine on the Web. In particular, the size of Cuil's index was talked up as its main claim to greatness - 120 billion web pages. But the whole press release is an exercise in Silicon Valley hyperbole. Here's just the intro:
"Cuil, a technology company pioneering a new approach to search, unveils its innovative search offering, which combines the biggest Web index with content-based relevance methods, results organized by ideas, and complete user privacy. Cuil (www.Cuil.com) has indexed 120 billion Web pages, three times more than any other search engine."
When you throw around terms like "pioneering", "significant breakthroughs", "ideal search engine", "complete user privacy", "next generation approach to search", ... well you better have a good product to back that up.
Some of the initial blog coverage of this story extended the hype. I must applaud Cuil's PR people for managing to get such overwhelming launch coverage, initially positive - although after bloggers actually started using the product the tone of the coverage changed accordingly.
The fact is, Cuil is a very ordinary product right now. In my own tests last night, I was left underwhelmed. Our official post today summed up our views: this is an average product that does not live up to its own hype, the NYT's hype, or the hype bestowed upon it by noted bloggers and those who thought they got a "scoop".
I still don't get it though - how come this startup got blanket coverage from tech news heavyweights, some of whom should know better than to buy into the hype? Did any of those publications actually test Cuil before writing up its greatness?
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I found this article :
New Search Engine, www.Cuil.com, Finally Ready to Compete With Google.
Cuil had great PR but they let themselves down with a poor product.
I fell for the news stories which sounded good but my experience was anything less than desirable. I couldn't find what I was looking for, and to be honest, I am so use to seeing my results in a list like google's that I struggled to understand the Cuil search results layout.
I spent less than 2 mins on their site before deciding it wasn't for me. Google may not be perfect, but it is an eco-system that is now part of my life.
The only way to break it is to maybe pay me.... (haha microsoft).
How?
Because it's part of the echo-chamber.
If you mention "ex-Google", "startup", and "funded" in the same sentence (or even paragraph), certain blogs will just cover it automatically.
And then, of course, other blogs will cover it because those one-or-two blogs covered it first.
"As we walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death..."
--Kyle
I think this is a case of a lot of industry folks trusting other folks based on relationships, and not actually doing any research of their own. Plus you get the big rush to publish first, which leaves limited time for analysis.
It will be interesting to see how the blogosphere evolves to deal with issues of shoddy journalism like this...
PS - I agree that "Cuil is Not Cool" http://www.mikevolpe.com/bid/6066/3-Reasons-Why-Cuil-is-Not-Cool
I agree. The only thing on my Google Reader list was Cuil. Read Write Web was the only, not-positive review of Cuil I could find. And your views are almost exactly like mine. It's nice and streamlined, but there aren't many cool features.
the whole Cuil thing is a disappointing shame. should not even been in the public eye yet. Huge uphill branding battle. Let along the technological feats of running a credible search engine. Does not matter if you've got 500 billion pages indexed. I don't know what Anna and Russell were thinking ......seems like bitterness or just a "Let's go for it now" thing...
Really, as per your focus here, it shows how dismal some of the online media and techcentric press are, ... equal to some of their 'real life' media/journalist counterparts covering other topics like US politics and international relations.... ugggh ... that's really too bad.
now let's never speak of Cuil again.
Tried it. It is horrid. The media is just as bad for pumping up this garbage.
It is going to be a long time before anyone can compete with Google. Google is McDonald's and the rest are Taco Bell, if that.
I'd like to know if there are personal or economic relationships. One industry blog had insinuating posts a few days before 'Wait until Thursday..." or something like that. So Cuil(l) had a head start. It reached five posts from one blog, all on Techmeme, naturally, and from there on out the rest of the media got a hold of it.
Our industry is important and does affect the traditional media outlets who are out of iPhone stories and not quite up on Friendfeed stories, so a Google-challenger play is an easy fix.
We must know biases (pro- or con-) and while invasive, personal relationships might affect coverage. I'm starting to lose faith. Either report or opine, but the mixing of the two is tired. We're all very guilt of this.
Agree with your assessment. I agree that the (a) bold claims and the (b) Google mystique are the 2 largest factors. Ironically, it is Google who is to blame for the blogosphere's obsession with being first. He who posts first gets the most links, and he who gets the most links, get the most love from Google. So this has caused the blogosphere to become so focused on timeliness vs. analysis in my opinion.
But all of those people were FIRST! They didn't get scooped. And that will be remembered long after their premature hype of Cuil is forgotten - "X is known for breaking technology news first... " Accuracy? Who needs that?
Classic. Go to Cuil.com and search for "cuil". They didn't even index themselves!!!!
Well I too did write about Cuil, and though I am neither a heavy weight critic, my post severly criticized the claims Cuil put in.
When someone puts in so much hype that they are way much bigger than someone who is already big, even before launching, we take it upon ourselves to figure out how exactly and why.
And if you been through Google blog search and organic results you will see that almost 75% posts are bashing Cuil and their claims outright. It's good to hype, but doing so against a established alternative is not only foolish, and to make matters worse Cuil isn't even delivering what they say they are.
And many may say that they are only 1 day old, which is totally crap as they have been working on the product for 2 years, and too years is more than enough to get the basic things right.
Who cares about having a great backend and indexing technology when your search results are patethic. For many of us we require relevant results at the first go almost 90% of the times, if Cuil can change that we would be more than happy to start using it.
Most people want to associate with (potential) winners/popular/rich segment hoping to be an outcome of 'collateral success'.... there is a reason why the rich get richer.
As George Bernard Shaw said "Make money and the whole nation will conspire to call you a gentleman" :)
It's just odd that so many good people got it so wrong. It's mind boggling. It's like they were hustled by a used car salesman into making a quick decision.
Hell, even M.A. got the name wrong!
I have a feeling though we're witnessing something that will be a marketing case study for the tech industry. Where too much publicity before a product is ready can actually do more harm than good.
+1 Elliott
Posted by: Sprague D
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July 28, 2008 7:27 PM
I think it's due to their "challenging Google" statement that makes everyone try it out.
The next question is ... How long is this going to last?
Hey, I blogged about it as soon as I tried it: http://thenoisychannel.blogspot.com/2008/07/not-as-cuil-as-i-expected.html
But that's a drop in the bucket against the echo chamber of the blogosphere.
You didn't get a check, too?
Posted by: Chris Baskind
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July 28, 2008 9:16 PM
I'll share my half of the check with you.
Posted by: LPH
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July 28, 2008 9:19 PM
got a pre-brief on it, tested it live and thought it was great (for a day 1 search engine). they have solved a lot of complex problems.
Just proves that how much press a start-up gets has nothing to do with how good its product is! Connections are key, as is making sure you've got the "hot" story - who cares if the site itself is actually working? Congrats to RWW for looking at the interesting side of the story.
Search "cuil" in cuil. How sad they can't hit on themselves.
h**p://www.cuil.com/search?q=cuil
A lot of the hypers are waiting for a Google competitor: That's what makes them blind on one eye ... or two.
Smile! Gerrit - We speak Online.
Richard, this comment site needs a fix.
Need an indicator for the required fields.
On top of it after entering name and comment, on submit takes to an error page saying email is required and on clicking to go back to the entry, the whole comment is lost.
First time posting here and lost mine already.
I saw Cuil on CNN today.Rick Sanchez and Gerri Willis presenting.It wasn't working for some reason.
just searched for "software testing life cycle" and got -- We didn’t find any results for “software testing life cycle”
Ha Ha ha... some say it is the worlds biggest search engine. WOW.
http://digg.com/tech_news/Cuil_Doesent_show_its_own_name_when_searched
Cuil doesent show its own name when searched Talk about indexing!
I think it was the talk of more pages indexed than Google that suckered people in.
I blogged about it yesterday too, felt a little disappointed. Not only because of the technology but also because the claim to take on Google was not well thought through.
Hope going forward they can make Cuil more relevant to the search terms !
I have no words to say, it's rock indeed
http://www.bangbull.com/details/23800-BE4/Amazing_natural_girl
This buzz is really strange. The product is not new at all. May be it is precisely that which is astonishing : a search engine today, it must be fantastic.
Anyway, I had my litte test : http://tinyurl.com/586rcg.
We, as users, are so desperate for there to be an alternative to Google out there that when something new comes along with Google pedigree everyone swarms to it.
It's inevitable that at some point someone will hit the nail on the head and manage to produce something that can take Google's search volume but it certainly isn't going to be by competing with Google head on.
I see Digg and other social bookmarking sites more as Google competitors than I do Cuil...
I also was not impressed with Cuil, realize that they used the "ex-googler" pedigree, know that some writers were way to eager to write positively about them BUT...
...can I get the phone number for their PR agency? =)
Awsome hype for a half baked pizza?
The reason Cuil has been met with so much anticipation, and so much hype, should be worrying to Google. What it suggests is not that Cuil is so cool but rather that people are starting to look for what's next. The days of Google as the rising underdog are over. They're the establishment now. Since everybody loves an underdog, we're all looking for the next one.
http://www.webtransplant.com/2008/07/way-cuil.html
Kind regards,
Evan Rudowski
Not so Cuil... they don't even own the .co.uk or .org versions of the domain name. Hardly a good way to start the next big search engine!
I would agree. Cuil results nowhere near to google. example- i search 'iamyuva' (google has 2100+ results but cuil has only 400) or 'yuva anandan' (cuil has zero result and google has 1100+ result). ofcourse google is accurate and cuil is not even close.
its a hype and i think, most people didn't want google to be 1-man show but they infact will not give up googling.
There are 30 million reasons the launch was heavily covered. Any startup that can raise $30 million pre-launch is going to be scrutinized by those who can't. And if you can raise that much, you'd better be perfect right out of the gate. It's like the Hillary Clinton campaign -- when you start off with all the resources, connections and "air of inevitable success" possible, you don't have the luxury of early mis-steps that prove you're vulnerable.
b/c ppl like 2 complain about startups & they like 2 talk a subject 2 death so that by the 2nd day no one wants 2 hear about it anymore
Posted by: ChaCha Fance
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July 29, 2008 6:01 AM
and yes +1 Elliott as well.
Posted by: ChaCha Fance
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July 29, 2008 6:02 AM
While Cuil deserves top marks for getting so much launch PR, it is a little mind boggling that they would decide to do the launch when relevancy and freshness are extremely poor. I suspect that both will improve significantly in time, but first impressions count for a lot. Why not wait until the quality of the product is where it needs to be in order to seriously compete?
Posted by: Mark Carey
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July 29, 2008 6:09 AM
well, i didn´t like it. I searched for my blog (geekmood.wordpress.com) and it didn´t showed up then i went to google, and, There it was! So, it isn´t the big deal to me
I tried it, found it to be slow and incredibly incomplete compared to Google.
Next!
Fell for that one too, I must admit
It seems some tech blogs are paid way too much when promoting a new product. This is a real shame for others who do not have the resources for such a promotion, but might deserve some attention.
Does this really surprise anyone? There is absolutely no accountability in the tech editorial world. People make predictions, claims and reports that are never challenged or corroborated. Remember when all the 'experts' sounded the death knell for facebook when it opened up beyond the college crowd? Remember reading any articles 6 months later saying 'oops we really blew that call'?
Me neither.
The answer is simple.
Cuil is using high technology and producing (in the eyes of the everage Google user) crap results.
If the users would have tested for example www.exalead.com for the first time. In comparison to Google - there were no comment to be made. Nothing great, nothing bad.
But a company with such an impressive management team raised the bar very high... too high in fact.
In my opionion Cuil is much better than www.hakia.com or www.lexxe.com - some other semantic search engines.
PR is King
i also gave it a try and didn't get any relevant result.
Probably they should market themselves to a more narrow market...
I first heard the report on NPR. My first thought was they spelled the name wrong - wasn't it Cuill. But I see they dropped one l.
NPR did point out the one thing I've always thought will make the difference for any search engine to challenge Google. The name has to be capable of being synonymous with Search. Is anyone going to say 'I cuil'd it' versus 'I googled it'. I don't think so.
I'm also sure whoever owns 'cool.com' appreciates the bump in traffic. A name that is spelled differently from the way it's pronounced is not something I'd want to build a brand around.
The second reason for this big echo is simple, too:
Cuil hit the fan with a AP - Associated Press news. THIS GOES AROUND THE WORLD.
see:
"The AP today reported on the launch of Cuil, a new search engine developed by some former Google engineers that is aiming to overtake Google as the dominant search engine on the Interwebs."
Cuil even made it onto and even on top of the "AP Executive Morning Briefing":
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jXPJmkJdyKGBu_J5HvhnfYCkYAzgD926OTMO2
Semantic Web is all the rage. No wonder that Cuil were featured by the AP.
Everyone forgets that there is an alternative to Google...it's called Yahoo. If your scared of one company's dominance then support the competion that already exists.
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