Cuil Beats Google ... In One Key Metric

By Wolfgang Gruener, published on August 1, 2008 at 1:10 PM
Source: Tom's Guide | Keywords: , , | Themes: The Internet, Networking, Business
Syndication: Add to your Google homepage Add to My Yahoo!

Chicago (IL) - Cuil launched with a bang this week, but perhaps not quite the bang its creators had hoped for. While Cuil claims to host the largest search index of all search engines currently available, the service does not seem to be mature enough to be able to compete with established search engines. However, there was one key metric that appears to be already working for Cuil.

According to market research firm Net Applications, Cuil had a market share of about 0.26% on its launch day. Within the first three days, interest in the service dropped significantly and was estimated at 0.09% by Thursday. These results are based on a survey of the browsing behavior of about 160 million users, Net Applications said.

However, Cuil was able to beat Google in at least one key metric - the time a user spends on a site. Compared to Google’s average of 9.37 minutes, Cuil was estimated to keep the average user about 9.65 minutes on its site. Yahoo came in at 8.57 minutes.

Since Cuil is new, the result is likely to show a common launch effect. While the result is impressive, users most likely have played with the service to find out what the search engine can offer, which may have lifted the spent time on site substantially above a real world value.

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Comments

kami3k 08/01/2008 7:27 PM
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Well of course they would spend longer, it's takes longer to found any useful info. Most of the results are like 5-10 years old if not older...

Anonymous 08/01/2008 7:40 PM
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Cuil is totally beat.
It was incredibly hubris for the developers of this search engine to think they could oust google.

invlem 08/01/2008 7:53 PM
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Well considering the google top hits seem to be more relevent than the cuil results, It'd make sense that people spend less time on google...

Anonymous 08/01/2008 8:11 PM
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Wouldn't you want to spend less time on a search engine...Find what you want and go to that page. I would be more annoyed spending more time looking for something.

NeoDude007 08/01/2008 8:32 PM
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While I agree that the article is fairly pointless because from a USER standpoint you don't want to spend any time on the search engine page but from a business standpoint that could mean more advertising revenue... not that anyone uses that site but that is what it WOULD mean if it didn't suck.

Anonymous 08/01/2008 8:33 PM
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I checked out Cuil because I was curious. Half of the searches I tried yielded zero results.

jeb1517 08/01/2008 8:47 PM
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Cuil also does not correct spelling like Google does. I love the "Did you mean ____?" link.

evilshuriken 08/01/2008 8:48 PM
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I usually find what I'm looking for within page one or 2 on Google. I never found anything useful on Cuil when I was playing with it.

eklipz330 08/01/2008 9:33 PM
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i have to admit, im loving the color scheme

BocAle 08/01/2008 9:47 PM
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This is because people are "reviewing" Cuil...

eklipz330 08/01/2008 11:26 PM
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cuil wont last... search |1 to 1 ratio fsb dram| on google and than on cuil, and you'll know what im talking about..remember to put it in those exact terms

Anonymous 08/06/2008 11:13 PM
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Tried it and damn didn't think Cuil would suck that much!

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