There is a new search engine out there called Cuil.com. It was started by some ex-Googler's. While it is different from Google I am not sure it is better.

I do like the layout, it is different and the idea of different drill downs and tabs is very nice and makes using the site very easy. It is a cool way to navigate a search engine.

As for the search results I am not sure they are that great. They actually remind me of the days when there were tons of search engines out there. The point of Cuil is to go back to content based searching, that is to say that as opposed to Google where the basis for a site being ranked is the sites that link to it. For Cuil it is content only, or so far as their info says and doing some searches using it, that appears to be true. The biggest issue I have run into using it is that I get a lot of old content. Lots of stuff that doesn't seem relievant right. Also doing searches for more than one word, such as my name, doesn't seem to pull anything related to me no matter how specific I make the keywords. This being said the domain name of the site also appears to be very low in their algorythm.

Cuil is just getting started and I am sure there are many improvements to come and most likely very soon.

I kind of feel though that Cuil could be gamed very easily at this point. Just looking through the results it seems that the old days of doorway pages and spam content might get you ranking quickly. Not sure how often they spider or update their index.

Basically, I think Cuil is a nice idea. With the current version I think it might be on par with MSN or just slightly trailing, but Google is still the king and Cuil has a lot to do to catch them.

I will keep checking it out and hope to see some great improvements. I think the search engine space as a whole is pretty bad right now. Inovation seem few and far between. It is getting harder and harder to find good information using a search engine, even Google. Maybe Cuil is the answer to new search or is enough to shake Google out of focusing on advertising and start focusing on search again.

Just my thoughts.