Cuil SEO thoughts

By Dave McAnally, Natural Search Supervisor

Well now that I’m back from my various cycling journeys in various parts of the globe that are cut off from the internet (oh yes, they exist), I’ve been back in Chicago long enough to gain some initial impressions of Cuil. As most of you know by now, this has been touted as the Google killer everyone anticipates (even made the headline of CNN). As near as I can tell, the two big reasons it gets this label is that some big names are behind it’s development, and because it presents an entirely new view for search results.

Cuil initially stated that their superior number of pages indexed was the unique selling position, but Google quickly squashed that announcing that it had actually indexed a trillion-odd pages (Billions? Trillions? Really now, at what point does the noise to signal ratio with pages indexed overshadow the usefulness of the results?). Instead of the (decidedly) drab list of links, we are now presented with a more ‘magazine’ like interface where results are staggered throughout the page with pictures (that may or may not sync with the article/page in question).

Since there are plenty of reviews on all the ins and outs of the late and great features on it, I’ll save the trouble and cut to the chase for things I see initially for how Cuil is going to function as an engine that can be optimized towards.

• First, I’m not sold on the image association whatsoever. There are some funny examples of how it simply doesn’t sync up. Optimizing for images on this could be an interesting endeavor as you may find your trademarked and/or proprietary images associated with content that doesn’t belong to you (and vice versa).
• Cuil is not effective for local search or long tail queries at all. This surprises me given the minds involved in creating it. But go ahead and check it out. Modesto California? Really? Not very effective compared to Google.
• I applaud the category effort, but I don’t think it’s quite to a stage where I’d call it ‘usable’ for the average user. The categories need to be more specific on most of the queries I’ve run. For example, none of these categories exactly apply to Resolution Media and Health Care certainly doesn’t. Were I to be searching on that (even if it wasn’t a branded query), those categories wouldn’t be very helpful. This categorization (coupled with the supposed use of semantic tags) could make for some interesting optimization tactics.
• On the plus side, I really like the layout change. It looks better, you can see more on one page, and it leaves room for some cool possibilities (hint hint: local search maps). It would be interesting for an eye tracking study to be performed on a Cuil search result page.
• So where are the paid listings going? Anyone?