Over the past few months I’ve written (exhaustively) about the challenges that search engines face in trying to break the dominance that Google currently holds. MediaWeek have come up with one of the most comprehensive overviews of the runners and riders as well as the difficulties that lay ahead of them.
There are dozens of search engines out there, even social media sites like Twitter are getting in on the act. Yet nobody can get near to ousting Google from the top of the heap. Established names like Microsoft (Bing) and Yahoo have resolved to simply trying to beat one another. New upstarts such as Cuil and Wolfram Alpha have enjoyed initial success, but have failed to convert that into any kind of meaningful long-term joy.
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Back in July, we posted the fact that new search engine, Cuil, had launched.
I thought it would be interesting to see how Google Trends was showing take up of this new search engine:
Google Trends as at 1st October 2008
Frustratingly, Google Trends won’t report the trend for Google.com but I think it a fairly safe assumption to say it’s a lot, lot higher!
It would be great to see another search engine come along as a serious rival to Google but a search I performed today within cuil.com for our own site, still has what would appear to be a competitors logo as ‘our thumbnail’! In fact most of the images on display appear have no connection to the site they have been associated with.
It is a real shame when gloss gets in the way of substance.
A rival search engine to Google has been launched earlier this week. Cuil pronounced “cool” and means knowledge in Gaelic. Founded by former Google engineers, they claim that it does a better job indexing information online.
Cuil delivers search results in a magazine format with images. The founders behind Cuil say that the technology used indexes the web pages by assessing and understanding the content on the page to provide relevant search results.
Like most new ventures, currently there are a few teething problems with incorrect images being returned with listings. But the question is, will users give this new search engine a second chance if they can’t find the desired information first time?
