According to research conducted this week by us here at StatCounter, the new search engine Cuil is one to watch.
Cuil, launched on Monday July 28th, could be a significant rival to Google. After just one day, Cuil accounted for 1 in every 1000 searches done on Tuesday.
Aodhan Cullen, CEO and founder of StatCounter said, “This is phenomenal when you consider that Altavista, a search engine founded in 1995, accounted for just 6 in 10,000 searches.”
Cullen continued, “We monitor over 100 search engines and Cuil was in the top ten in US, UK and Ireland. When you consider that over 90 other search engines (e.g. go, excite, alltheweb.com, lycos) combined accounted for just 1.54% of searches on Tuesday – Cuil with its 0.1% share on the market inside 24 hours is doing extremely well.”
On Tuesday Cuil accounted for:
- 1 in 1,000 searches globally and in the US
- 1 in 500 searches in the UK
- 1 in every 400 searches in Ireland
Note: This information is based on a sample of over 25 million page views globally.
Press queries to StatCounter PR Agency:
Mary O’Brien/Jacinta Ryan – Simpson FTPR
UPDATE – 3 August 2008
Thanks for all the comments and interest so far folks!
It does appear that Cuil is having some “teething troubles”, but hopefully they will manage to work these out soon. It’s a brand new search engine – let’s give it a chance!
Some of you have mentioned how the high traffic that Cuil has received is as a result of an impressive PR and marketing campaign. We agree! Regardless of the reason, however, we believe that interest in Cuil has been unexpectedly high. Of course, we have to wait and see how the engine performs in the future, but the stats so far have been interesting anyway. Without initial stats, how could we compare how Cuil fares in the weeks and months ahead?
In our opinion, and for a variety of reasons, Cuil remains “one to watch” – whether we will be watching a meteoric rise or a slow descent remains to be seen… Further to some of your suggestions, though, we would be delighted to update you with more stats on how Cuil is doing in the coming weeks – we’ll keep you posted! 😉