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Ex-Google engineers debut 'Cuil' way to search

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Re: Ex-Google engineers debut 'Cuil' way to search

#71

Post by thorax »

parenthesis wrote: post #61

It seems to me that a way to potentially creep up on google would be to make a specialist search engine. Some topic area that google is not so useful for searching on. Make a search system that 'understands' the domain in question, allowing it to index and search it really effectively. As a random example, say, a movies search engine. If it could be consistently more useful than google for finding out information abo…

Well, you're pretty much describing "vertical" search engines. There are a lot of those these days, and I think they have good chances of being successful, too.

It's like what we're doing over at bug.gd-- building up an error-based search engine. Our upcoming version (we hope to announce in the next month or so) will have a variety of techniques optimized for searching for errors on the web. (E.g. filtering of user-specific "noise" in error messages, better integration into software, etc.) With the added bonus of capturing feedback from users that can be used for future users and for software writers.

We've been seeing some great uptake lately, so I'm bullish on the vertical search space.

We've been debating on a two-column search results page for our redesign, so we're watching cuil's success closely to see how people like that kind of presentation.

Re: Ex-Google engineers debut 'Cuil' way to search

#72

Post by prakash »

dhotson wrote: post #28
beaudeal wrote: post #5

first things first...am i the only person who wants to keep saying "kweel" and not "cool"?? in terms of the site itself, i am sort of liking the design / layout of the search, although like agotterer said, it still needs a lot of work -- from what i can tell, popular search terms have pretty darn good results but unpopular search terms return sub-par results (see his example haha)... in terms of a threat to google??…

I personally found the search results page a tad confusing. Having the results in a grid layout, my first impression was that they were all ads! .. also, how do I know which result is #1 ? Top left? Middle?

why does it matter which result is #1 if you can find what you are looking for on the first page in the first row or first column?

Re: Ex-Google engineers debut 'Cuil' way to search

#73

Post by frouaix »

Cuil seems to be a company of hackers. Just have a look at the founders page: Anna Patterson? wrote 2 search engines (Xift and Recall.archive.org) before the GOOG. Louis Monier? major contributor to at least one search engine (Alta Vista), and also said to have helped eBay.

Re: Ex-Google engineers debut 'Cuil' way to search

#74

Post by jimbokun »

beaudeal wrote: post #5

first things first...am i the only person who wants to keep saying "kweel" and not "cool"?? in terms of the site itself, i am sort of liking the design / layout of the search, although like agotterer said, it still needs a lot of work -- from what i can tell, popular search terms have pretty darn good results but unpopular search terms return sub-par results (see his example haha)... in terms of a threat to google??…

"i am sort of liking the design / layout of the search"

Did it strike anyone else that this is one of the ideas that Y-combinator said it would like to fund? (beating Google at design in the search space)

Re: Ex-Google engineers debut 'Cuil' way to search

#75

Post by domnit »

They're new, so I don't want to dismiss them, but if their selling point is their larger-than-Google index, I'm not buying. On my sample query, I got a web proxy in both the first and second pages of results. It's easy to have a large index if you are showing the same thing in triplicate. Google does a great job of narrowing their large index to what the user needs to know. Nothing wrong with some healthy competition, but Google was right to stop (publicly) counting pages.

Re: Ex-Google engineers debut 'Cuil' way to search

#76

Post by dhotson »

prakash wrote: post #72
dhotson wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally found the search results page a tad confusing. Having the results in a grid layout, my first impression was that they were all ads! .. also, how do I know which result is #1 ? Top left? Middle?

why does it matter which result is #1 if you can find what you are looking for on the first page in the first row or first column?

Well one of the things about Google that I really like is that they really make a lot of effort to make sure that the #1 result is the page you actually want. It's part of the whole 'Feeling Lucky' thing. I'd rather not have to read through the entire search results page to figure out which one is the most relevant.. that's the search engine's job!

In other words, don't make me think. :)

Re: Ex-Google engineers debut 'Cuil' way to search

#77

Post by lacker »

prakash wrote: post #72
dhotson wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally found the search results page a tad confusing. Having the results in a grid layout, my first impression was that they were all ads! .. also, how do I know which result is #1 ? Top left? Middle?

why does it matter which result is #1 if you can find what you are looking for on the first page in the first row or first column?

because you have to look somewhere first.

#1 is whatever is the closest to the upper left corner.

Re: Ex-Google engineers debut 'Cuil' way to search

#78

Post by pg »

parenthesis wrote: post #61

It seems to me that a way to potentially creep up on google would be to make a specialist search engine. Some topic area that google is not so useful for searching on. Make a search system that 'understands' the domain in question, allowing it to index and search it really effectively. As a random example, say, a movies search engine. If it could be consistently more useful than google for finding out information abo…

What you should make is a specialist search engine for hackers. They're the early adopters in search engines, so if you get them you have the quickest path to getting everyone else.

Imagine how alarmed Google would be if there were a different search engine the top 10k hackers all used, even if they had everyone else. And rightly so.

http://news.ycombinator.com/apply ...

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