In an earlier blog post, and like many others, it seems that about 70% of bloggers gave Cuil a serious lashing in post after post.  And that’s ok, I still believe that if you plan to launch a search engine and claim it will be “better” than Google, a server glitch is not just a glitch.  Its a foolish mistake.

In retrospect, I took a look at the approach for which they did it.  Most search marketing professionals would agree that negative publicity, and controversy, particularly from within our own industry is like throwing gasoline on the California wild fires (which I’m sure there is one burning somewhere.)  And those Googlers, ex or existing, are pretty smart.

Did Cuil want this?  

Did they want to come out and strategically flop? Initial blog posts would have began early in the morning, and people typically read the news in the morning.  By midday it might slow a bit, but pick back up in the afternoon as people get home from work.  Maybe they would check it out.  I mean, its just new search engine as far as the general public sees it.  But instead, it crashes.  A whole new topic to talk about emerges and spread amongst SEO-nerd friends.  There are interviews to be done and people to criticize!  Let’s get to it!!

Regardless of how it went all went down (pun intended), the fact is that their crashing stirred news and is bringing people back to see if it still works.  This morning, Wil Chang, Obu’s VP of Marketing, sent over several posts about Cuil not being able to find “COBAL,” an old programming languange that is in use today for some banking institutions.

It will be interesting to see how it all pans out, even though it will be as exciting as watching paint dry.  In the meantime, Google is better, Cuils design is terrible, and has anyone noticed that it has featured the exact same amount of webpages on its homepage since Monday? – “Search 121,617,892,992 web pages

Contact us

Ready to chat?
First coffee is on us.

Getting started is easy. Fill out the info below and we'll respond within 45 minutes.

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.