A few former Google guys just rolled out a brand-spanking-new search engine called Cuil. They claim it indexes the web deeper and smarter than any other algorithm.
So, what do you get when you put in my name? A search for Ike Pigott does indeed pull up things written about me, but very little written by me. The Cuil team claims:
Rather than rely on superficial popularity metrics, Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance.
I have a problem with this claim, as you can go through the top fifty results and barely find a single website that I actually run. Instead, you find several Tweets with my name in them, or even worse, Jaiku messages that were nothing more than a re-post of my Twitter feed. It seems as though the more-traffic-more-authority model is still at work here.
Even worse, I seem to have lost my face. Look at these results:
Someone who is not me
this guy is popular
So, in the first fifty results for my name, a person who does not know me would logically assume that is my picture. To make things even more strange, the picture that’s linked to the ZoomInfo result does not appear on the Ike Pigott ZoomInfo page.
So… this is a search engine that claims not to be influenced so much by popularity, yet it draws from websites like Twitter with insane amounts of traffic. It also claims to pull information in a more contextual way, yet misses the bulk of my input and gives me a complete facial makeover.
Yes, I’ll give these folks some time. After all, in the minutes it’s taken me to write this, the resultant buzz about this new shiny toy has already overwhelmed the server. It does make one wonder, however, just how many other search engines are out there popping up strange results. Google is well on its way to being a permanent verb, yet there’s still a significant amount of search traffic on those fringes. Most people can’t name more than two engines.
[tags]Ike Pigott, Occam’s RazR, cuil, search, search engine optimization[/tags]
After reading your post, I went to Cuil to check it out. Luckily, my blog and company website were the first two results on my name. But that same guy kept showing up on my results too! We must be related. Or maybe he’s the founder of Cuil. I was happy to see that I’m the first result for “social marketing,” so this Cuil thing can’t be too stupid.
Neither my blog or I show in the first 100 efforts to locate anything in regards to my search. Now my blog is a Google based blog which helps but still I have written a lot over the years too. Perhaps it will change once they get more hits, if anyone can find it!
Mark P. Sadler
P.S. I have linked you on my site since it’s conception.. love your show!
Hey, at least the random photo included in your search is the right gender and reasonably attractive. I’m still trying to figure out what the Random Old Guy in my search has to do with anything Heidi Miller-related!
Cuil gets thumbs down.
I just did some ego-surfing over there. My own stuff didn’t rise to the top, which isn’t surprising with a name like mine and not much specifics, but I’m amused by the way they keep plugging in the same pictures of faces – near-random selection and a limited stockpile, apparently. Reminds me of the “man in the street” interviews done by The Onion…