Like many people yesterday, I was excited to check out the well funded, new search engine from the former Googlers. Cuil was supposed to be the challenger to Google’s search throne. Their launch yesterday was more about a company missing an opportunity. They received a fair amount of press, which not only got me to visit their site but also a fair amount of my less technically inclined friends. 

While they claim to have a largest index, the results are anything but good. Cuil … it’s not the size of your index, but the quality of the results. Cuil fails miserably exactly where it was most likely to engage new users. They seem to have failed to ask themselves a most basic question,

What are user’s likely to search for when using a new search engine?

People search for themselves or for something they know. The whole idea of Google-ing yourself is obviously not a new one. Whether to satisfy a curiosity or for privacy purposes, few have not broken down and indulged in this bit of quasi-ego-maniacal activity. It’s an exciting activity that is often revealing and usually in an unexpected way. Cuil totally misses the boat. 

Searches performed for the names of a couple of people I know provided absolutely no results. These same names in Google and Yahoo provide a hearty amount of results, as these are people who regularly blog. In addition, a search for my company’s name provided results that we were anything but focused. Google and Yahoo provide much more focused, quality results.

If Cuil is to really make a challenge, they sure got off to a really bad start. They totally missed on a wonderful opportunity to make a great impression on the most significant amount of traffic they were likely to receive for free. In addition, they garnered a whole bunch of bad reviews, which will make their goal of overtaking Google all the more difficult.