By Ben
Well, they’re trying to. Anna Patterson and Tom Costello have launched a new search engine, Cuil (pronounced: cool), which they say searches more sites then any other search engine and knows how to analyze and sort its pages to get the most relevant results.
Sounds ‘cuil’.
The problem is that people don’t just use Google for search. It’s used for Gmail, iGoogle, Google maps, Google images, Google news, Google blogs, Google shopping, Google video – should I continue? Google is not successful just because it’s a search engine – it’s successful because of every other feature it brings to the user.
Getting back to the first point, Cuil claims that they’re superior to Google because they can search three times as many pages and produce more relevant results. My question is how we can know these extra pages are relevant and not spam sites? When I’ve searched Google, I’ve always had a lot of success, and almost always found what I’m looking for in the first couple results, or somewhere on the first page.
Also, Cuil organizes their pages in a much different format then Google, which may take a lot of getting used to for some. Instead of creating a list, it has a paragraph on each site scattered around the page.
Tom Costello told The New York Times, “I think it will be better, but there is no question that the public has to decide.”
Let the debate begin.
July 28th, 2008
By Ginger
I had the opportunity to attend PRSA’s Digital Impact Conference the past few days in New York City, and discovered quite a few new resources that I wanted to pass along, as we all try to identify the best ways to make our digital and social media marks online. Check them out when you get a chance!
SEO / Linking and Ranking Tools
- Seodigger.com - Shows how a company ranks for organic search
- Market Leap - Add in a URL and see how many links your site has versus competitors, and what their ranks are
- Yahoo! Search Site Explorer - Tells you how many inbound links there are to a particular domain name
- SEO Book Rank Checker - Free Firefox rank-checking tool that lets you see how your website stacks up to competition
- SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool - See how one certain word ranks for SEO purposes
- Search Rascal - Shows the sites that are ranked for use of one certain word, and how it changes over time
- “Link:” on www.Google.com – If you type “link:” immediately followed by a domain name (ex: link:racepointgroup.com) into Google search, the results will show you which and how many sites are linking to that domain name
Twitter
- TweetScan - A real-time search engine for Twitter that lets you find the conversations on the topics you want.
- Who Should i Follow - Enter in your Twitter username, and this tool will give you suggestions of people you might want to follow.
- TweetWheel - A tool that shows you which of your Twitter friends know one another
- TwitDer – A Twitter directory that shows you the most popularly followed people on Twitter, and the people that send the most updates
Video
- Icyou.com - Healthcare video community that brings you everything from late-breaking medical research videos to exercise tips
- Blinkx - Search online video
- Tubemogul - Video analytic tool that shows you when, where and how often videos are being watched, letting you measure how powerful your video marketing campaign is against competitors
- RedLasso – Search national and local TV and radio broadcasts and make clips to post to your site
Podcasts
- Podscope - Search engine that lets you search podcasts by typing in a phrase of spoken words
- Podcast Alley - One of the biggest collections of podcasts on the Internet – features the top 10 podcasts as rated by listeners
- Podcast Directory - A podcast search site similar to Podcast Alley
Any really great tools that you have come across that you would like to share? Let us know about the sites that you have found!
June 12th, 2008
