Cuil’s founders worked with other search engines and knew that tinkering with old systems wouldn’t work. A fundamentally different approach was needed. So we’ve developed new architecture and algorithms that can handle the exponential growth of the Internet and organize results that reflect its enormous complexity.
Cuil believes that:
Size matters because many people use the Internet to find information that is of interest to them, even if it’s not popular. Existing technology can’t keep up with the increasing volume of Web pages. If a search engine is incapable of indexing the Internet properly how can it hope to provide accurate search results? Imagine if the phone company decided to stop listing infrequently called numbers in the phone book. Maybe no one phones your grandmother much, but if her friend from the old neighborhood wants to get in touch, shouldn’t her number be in the book? Cuil lists all the numbers, even the ones that aren’t called much. Because one day someone will need that number.
Popularity is useful, but has dominated search results so heavily that it gets harder and harder to find the page you want, especially if your search is a complex one. Cuil respects popular pages and recognizes that for many simple searches, popularity is an easy answer to your question. But for a deeper search, establishing relevancy is more than a numbers game. Cuil prefers to find all the pages with your keyword or phrase and then analyze the rest of the content on those pages. During this analysis we discover that your keywords have different meanings in different contexts. Once we’ve established the context of the pages, we’re in a much better position to help you in your search.
The Internet is information; usually too much. Ten blue links is a simple concept which fails to reflect the huge diversity and variety of information available to you on the Web. Cuil organizes the Internet so you can find the information you want. We separate different ideas from each other so you can choose the one that interests you. We pick images to illustrate the idea behind each page to aid you in your choice. We include roll-over definitions and offer you ideas to refine your search. We can do all this because we believe that information is only useful when it’s sorted. Cuil’s goal is to guide you towards answers to the questions you’re not even sure how to ask.
Privacy is a hot topic these days, and we want you to feel totally comfortable using our service. Because Cuil analyzes Web pages and not click-throughs, we don’t need to know your search history and habits. So our privacy policy is very simple: when you search with Cuil, we do not collect any personally identifiable information, period. We have no idea who sends queries: not by name, not by IP address, and not by cookie. Your search history is your business, not ours. We don’t need to keep logs of our users’ search activity, so we don’t. For further details, read our Privacy Policy. Don’t worry, it’s short and to the point. No legal mumbo-jumbo.