Cuil really doesn't measure up in my tests. How about yours? - Robert Scoble

I agree. So far Cuil does not really measure up. For a couple of searches I tried out I got no results for one (search term: iGoogle) or I got okay results with a few incorrect URLs (search term: vimo). - Atul Arora

Interesting start (after the long wait). An 'ego search' revealed stuff I had forgotten about a long time ago, but I'm not sure how relevant they were. Think it's a little too early to tell. They obviously have indexed A LOT. So far, doesn't appear to match Google on relevancy from the 20 terms I just tried. - Charlie Anzman

too few useful search results on most queries, and several bugs relating to narrowing down within a topic using the suggestions at the top. i suppose it has potential, but to me this is still an alpha product at best. - Shawn C. Reed

Google gives far better search results for the keywords I tested. Apart from the results display, there's nothing good in Cuil yet. - Imran Hussain

interesting try, but not to be - Duncan Riley

When I do a search, I would prefer to stay in the search results page for a very short time. Right now, only Google allows me to do that. - Dileepa Prabhakar

Sucks. (1) Incorrect pictures are attached to links. (2) Algorithm for selecting top links (and related topics) whacked! Seems to be fine-tuned for university professors and popular people, but really bad for ordinary folks. 70% of the Top 10 when searching my name http://www.cuil.com/search... are old 1992-99 links. Global Crossing (WTF?) is #1. And my business/personal websites, four blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, and FriendFeed pages are nowhere on my front page. - Mitchell Tsai

This reminds me how Wikia Search also had gotten lots of hype before launch, but till now, it's just useless. It was also termed as Google's competition. - Imran Hussain

They should have tuned the engine for 'ego searches', especially for those whose reviews are read first, picked by TechMeme etc. If the search makes the reviewer look good, it'll get good reviews.. if it finds some old college photos that are not so representative, they'll advise people to stay away ;) - Jemm

Joni: Why do 'ego searches' sound like biased search rankings to me? I don't think Google did that to reach the number 1 spot. - Imran Hussain

Buggy (1) Sometimes shows 0 results. Repeat your query. (2) Sometimes fails when trying to see pages 2, 3, etc... - I think they should have alpha-tested & beta-tested better. These are trivial problems which should have been fixed. - Mitchell Tsai

Imran: actually Google was ALWAYS superior to AltaVista and Yahoo for ego searches. So, maybe there's something to that! :-) - Robert Scoble

i'm looking at a huge fail right now. 403. - Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins

For quite a few names, including my own, it just produces nothing. - Barak B

My very FIRST HotBot searches were better tham AltaVista. My FIRST Google searches were ok compared to HotBot. I came back to Google years later (and stayed with HotBot) until one day when I noticed the caching feature in Google (not sure if caching was in the launch). Neither engine had these Cuil problems. FAIL. - Mitchell Tsai

"Due to overwhelming interest, our Cuil servers are running a bit hot right now. The search engine is momentarily unavailable as we add more capacity." Is this true, or are they trying to respond to the social media complaints about poor performance? Another Twitter-style don't tell the truth? - Mitchell Tsai

And... Twitter gets a new friend, a Cuil Fail Whale? :) - Imran Hussain

<quote>We’ll be back soon... Due to overwhelming interest, our Cuil servers are running a bit hot right now. The search engine is momentarily unavailable as we add more capacity. Thanks for your patience.</quote> No, I'll not be using it unless it can grow up and provide a differentiated search technology. - Parth Awasthi

The 3-column search results page looks cool though. :) - Jonas

Just checked it out. I like it. Yes I may consider using it. - Michael McGimpsey from twhirl

Seems nice but I don't think I'll use it - Outsanity

Well all the hype for nothing I guess. I was deeply disappointed by the results. Why was google after buying them? I dont find anything great at all - Sidharth Dassani

This is a promising company. It is good that people don’t accept the monopoly of Google and create new search engines. But Cuil seems very unstable. It would be better if they tested it more before opening their doors - Kerem Ozkan

it is down right now (in paris) - David Berrebi from twhirl

Showing relevant links, showing results in the same category, some good features. But I can't compare it to google for now. Thinking it is just a few hours old search engine, just give it some time to mature =) - Hakan Deryal

Without the Image feature I think it's a non starter. - Soulhuntre from twhirl

Has there been a study done that found that search results are best displayed with a blue heading, followed by black text, followed by a green URL? - Zach Underwood

it's already down - Ainsworth Boyle from twhirl

I just tried a search for Obama's tech policy and it delivered pretty decent results. Looks like a decent enough search engine, but it their tech is all about cheaper indexing then they probably won't usurp Google anytime soon. - Devlin Dunsmore from twhirl

Looks better than google, but doesn't perform.. I just have a feeling of missing something, when not searching via google. Weird, huh? - Daniel van Moll

Quick, someone call Microsoft so they can pay $100 million for something else that doesn't work. - Thomas Hawk

Paging through the results sometimes brings none... Seems but bit for me - João Almeida

I'll give it points for its look. Maybe they'll push Google to raise the bar in that aspect at least. - Dave Roth

No image search, no advanced search, no blog search. call it beta. - JECO Photo

It seems to display non-related images next to search results. That's just weird. - Tom Quinn

Someone (cuil?) needs to really tell me how it's "better" and will benefit me more before I ever switch. I just tried it and it reminded me of Ask.com. I was also frustrated that I couldn't filter my results via Blogs, News, Images, etc... - Ron Emrick

While they've been at it a while, it still takes time to search and index everything. Google wasn't awesome overnight, either. Time will tell w/ Cuil. Google certainly has the advantage of being a relative veteran in search, tho, as well as all that mindshare. - abacab from fftogo

No compelling reason to use it. Above all, an "ego search" returned a photo of someone else. Lame! - Nenad Nikolic from twhirl

I came to work expecting to check out Cuil (based on an NPR story). As I walked in, my friend texted me with "Cuil." - he was watching CNN earlier this morning. I don't know if they have 3 times more pages indexed, but their PR is working just fine. - AT

The user interface is great. The results are poor. Of course, Cuil probably needs to index more pages to get better results. In a couple of years, perhaps Cuil could be useful. - Rishabh Mishra (p248)