Cuil is pitched as being bigger, faster and better than Google's search engine in pretty much every way.
The most important difference between Cuil and Google is its ranking system. Rather than assigning priority to pages based on inbound links as Google does (Google 'Pagerank'), Cuil analyses the content of web pages to divine their relevance to a search query. This means Cuil's results are automatically categorised. When a user searches for a common name, for example, Cuil will return a result page where results for different individuals with that name are groups under tabs. It will also break out sub-topics related to each name. A search for 'Harry' results in different tabs for "Harry Potter" and "Prince Harry of Wales". The Harry Potter tab then presents further sub-links devoted to actors, Gryffindor dorm-mates and so on.
The service also displays images from web results whenever possible. Another potential advantage of the context-based search is that it may allow Cuil searches to be more respectful of user privacy. Unlike Google, which simply has to track every single click to refine its index, Cuil's context-based search does not. In practice, the distinction may be moot because Cuil will need to track clicks to see if their results are working for people, but it could serve as a marketable distinction.
It is regarding the size of Cuil's web index, however, where the company makes its boldest claim. The engine was launched with 120 billion pages indexed, well over the 40 billion that Google had. Cuil's web crawler was three times faster than Google's, although it was not clear whether it means that 'per search computer' or for the entire system. Compared with Google's globe-spanning data network of data centres Cuil's two relatively tiny data centres, hosting fewer than 2,000 PCs in total, will have to run fast to outpace Google's crawlers.
Cuil launched on Monday without a 'beta' tag but the site is not as complete as Google. While Google has had failures in extending its brand, such as with Froogle or Google Base, its collection of services that are affiliated with its mainstream search product, such as Google Maps, Image Search and Desktop Search, can make switching away from Google difficult for users. Costello said he realises that Cuil needs to layer in additional services, but added that the company had to start somewhere.
http://www.cuil.com/
