Cuil – Latest Stats

Hi folks,

Following on from your suggestions, we have been keeping an eye on the usage stats for the new search engine Cuil. Unfortunately, we have been watching a quick decline rather than a steep ascent to success!

Despite an impressive start, stats for Cuil have been falling steadily. It’s unfortunate that the engine couldn’t capitalise on the initial interest it generated following widespread media coverage, and it remains to be seen if and how Cuil plans to tempt many disgruntled users back to the site as the index improves. It looks like the folks at Cuil have some tough work ahead of them.

In the meantime, please find below the latest stats for Cuil – these figures show the % of searches performed using Cuil relative to the total number of searches performed.

Globally US UK
Jul 29 0.10%
(1 in 1,000)
0.11%
(1 in 1,000)
0.19%
(1 in 500)
Jul 30 0.11% 0.12% 0.19%
Jul 31 0.08% 0.09% 0.10%
Aug 01 0.06% 0.07% 0.10%
Aug 02 0.05% 0.07% 0.09%
Aug 03 0.04% 0.04% 0.08%
Aug 04 0.03% 0.04% 0.06%
Aug 05 0.03%
(3 in 10,000)
0.04%
(1 in 2,500)
0.05%
(1 in 2,000)
Aug 06 0.03% 0.03% 0.05%
Aug 07 0.02% 0.03% 0.01%
Aug 08 0.02% 0.02% 0.01%
Aug 09 0.02% 0.03% 0.01%
Aug 10 0.01% 0.02% 0.01%

Note: This information is based on a total sample for the period of over 365 million page views globally.

95 Comments

  1. Any new search engine that wants to take on the big G needs to find something representative of result quality that can’t easily be impacted by those with the resources to skew results.

    Links can be manipulated.
    On page content can be manipulated.
    Search result click behavior can be manipulated.

    It’s a tough game to play!

  2. I actually like Cuil’s website layout better. The colors are a bit harsh but I could get used to it.

    I think the failure occured at the actual searches.

    The main difference between Google and Cuil is that Cuil doesn’t measure CTR, because CTR infringes on your privacy in a way. Cuil wanted to be the search engine of a new era – ethical searching perhaps. The problem is that CTR shows the psychology behind every search – what you actually searched for instead of what spammed its way to the top.

    Cuil will have to find a replacement for this without infringing on peoples privacy. I think it can be done, and I believe cuil does have a future as a google competitor. Hopefully they will figure it out soon.

  3. Thanks StatCounters! What a user friendly, attractive site. How do I add your Logo to my Blog without forfeiting my counter stats?

    Thank a million, and keep up the great work!

    NakedApe

    StatCounter Team Response:

    Hi NakedApe!

    Thanks for your kind comments! You can of course add our logo to your site – have a look at this page for more information.

    All the best!

  4. My new theory is that Cuil was never intended to be a search engine that delivered relevant results. Instead, I think that the reason for Cuil is to have the biggest index of the internet and then sell that database onto another company like Microsoft search or Yahoo.

    When you look at the profiles of the ex-Google employees at Cuil, their skills are all in the field of creating large indexes/databases and no expertise in extracting relevant results from such an index.

  5. Take a google search result, add more text to each entry and maybe a related picture, and then put it in 3 columns; that’s the impression I got from cuil.

    Google grabbed the top spot from Altavista years ago with their innovative ranking algorithm that put the most important pages first. There really was a *need* for that. What need is cuil responding to?

  6. The layout is just way busier than it needs to be. Also, I typed in the name of a website, and it didn’t find it. But it found one site that referred to it. That’s just not useful to me. As Danny says, I think it was the PR that worked, because of the many search pages I’ve seen, this is one of the worst.
    -B

  7. Their PR worked fairly well because here we all are 3 weeks later still talking CUIL.

  8. My two main issues with Cuil

    1) I did not like their results layout, difficult to read and browse

    2) Put my name in (I’m a writer with multiple sites) on Google and you get thousands of hits. Put it in on Cuil and it gets no hits. That means either their page collection methods are incomplete, or I don’t exist. Rene Descartes suggests I do.

    I am actually an old AltaVista partisan from way back, who only grudgingly went to Google as it became more powerful…winning tme over to yet another engine will require it to be better, not inferior.

  9. I think they need to think about some of the floors in the other major search engines and focus on that; things that spring to my mind.I tried it the first day… and when a few of my search terms (popular ones) did NOT return ANY results… I never went back.. as I am sure millions of other people did..Cuil is a good example of how not to launch a website. All that money spent on PR has been wasted (unless of course its a black marketing campaing from Google in which case, money well spent.). If they want to get those kind of hits again, they will have to spend even more money on PR the next time to convince people that it’s not as rubbish as it used to be.

  10. One thing that seems very apparent is that a large portion of CUIL’s initial burst of traffic was because webmasters were checking where they ranked in CUIL’s results.

  11. I did the same thing as others. Tried it the first day, plain old regular keywords returned zero hits, and I’ve not been back. If you want a different kind of search engine, try searchme.com. It was listed in most of the articles along with cuil. Not sure the hits are any better, but at least it seems to be of value.

  12. After millions of dollars was invested they made one of the biggest mistakes a company could make… right out of the gate… They announced they were open for business when they were not 100% ready.. made a bunch of statistic claims that they could NOT back up..

    I tried it the first day… and when a few of my search terms (popular ones) did NOT return ANY results… I never went back.. as I am sure millions of other people did..

    Lesson to be learned… don’t brag unless you can back it up — AND — never announce your grand opening until all the bugs are worked out… CUIL will be in the black abyss in a few months and that domain will be worth a cuil $8.95…………………

  13. It is very difficult for a new search engine to survive out there. People are so used to Google. It is extremely difficult to detach them from the big G. Last year, Mylivesearch from Melbourne made a lot of noise.These days, I do not hear anything about them as well.

  14. I also think that the grid layout is not user friendly, I like the standard list of results – I dont think theres really any floor in this display method and dont think it really needs to be changed.

    Other than that, I like the look of cuil it looks modern and attractive.

    However, I think they’ve set them selves a very tough task – drawing people away from Google, or in fact any other major search engine. To accomplish this I think they really need to offer something fundimentally better than Google offers and I dont think they do – I know they are boasting a much larger search database, but in practical terms, can you get anything from Cuil that you cant get from Google? Thats the question, and even if it was slightly better than Google – why bother to change, people trust Google.

    I think they need to think about some of the floors in the other major search engines and focus on that; things that spring to my mind:

    Far too many directories come up in Google listings, I personally think if you are searching for say bouncy castles, you want to find a bouncy castle site not a directory of a load more resulsts for bouncy castle sites – I think this is becoming a major issue in the search engine sector.

    Secondly, some better and maybe user interactive filtering methods – what are the average amount of results returned for a search? Maybe 500,000? How can you ever look through that many results. I think it would be good to make an interactive search engine where you can continuously interegate the returned results and narrow it down.

    Or perhaps even the search engine equivelant of a spam filter – if you get rubbish results you mark them as spam and them pages are analysed and the search engine builds a profile of what results you like???

    http://me.dium.com/search – Like your site Chris, I think that looks snazzy!

  15. Cuil guys have to go a long way…..
    Cuil search no where stands in front of google search.

    One more thing i notice that Cuil don’t even read the meta tag “description” to get the description of the page…

  16. Alexa Traffic Rank is showing the same decline – http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/cuil.com – but it’s also showing a new climb since a day or two ago!

  17. Even before Cuil was ‘public’, I saw mention of it on another forum, and the thinking there was that it was all a ploy to develop an alternate search strategy to Google, then sell the technology back to Google. If Cuil is made up of ex-Google employees, that would make sense in light of the abysmal failure Cuil has been to the general public.

    So they sell Cuil back to their former masters for a killing, and a year or two later, we see some form of an alternate ‘Google-pretty’ search engine, marketed for people who don’t like search engines or some other marketing nonsense.

  18. Cuil is a good example of how not to launch a website. All that money spent on PR has been wasted (unless of course its a black marketing campaing from Google in which case, money well spent.). If they want to get those kind of hits again, they will have to spend even more money on PR the next time to convince people that it’s not as rubbish as it used to be.

    Statcounter helped me learn the same lesson with my own website. I launched it before it was ready, got loads of hits, but the visitors were dissapointed that it wasn’t fully ready and never came back in full numbers.

    The world wide stats are also interesting, showing which countries are more susceptable to media hype / propaganda etc. Or perhaps which countries are the least loyal to Google?

Comments are closed.

Try Statcounter free for 30 days

No credit card required. Downgrade to the free plan anytime.

Try it for FREE!