Chad Egeland

The new Google search killer Cuil launched today to much hype, PR and over loaded servers that you couldn’t access for part of the day. Cuil was started by  former Google employees, is pronounced cool and their current claim to fame is that they have indexed 121,617,892,992 web pages. They also do not store any of your search data unlike Google who retains all of your search data which may then be used to not only allow the government to track you down easier but to also improve their own search results.

Cuils search philosophy begins with bigger is better meaning that they believe having the greatest amount of indexed pages is best and that the popularity of a page isn’t the most important when ranking a page for relevancy and that the content on the keywords on a page go a long way in determining how relevant a page is to a search result.

Cuil presents its search results in a much different fashion than Google, Yahoo or MSN. Instead of showing results in a linear fashion with the top result being the most relevant to your search they instead show your results in either a 2 of 3 column depending on what you choose and include an image and text from the site. On the right hand side there is also an ajaxified Explore By Category search refiner that allows you to drill down deeper into your search results. Tabs along the top are used for offering other choices and suggestions to help further define your search terms. They also offer a search term suggestion so as you type in the search fields an auto-complete tries to guess what exactly it is your are going to type.  Sadly it appears dirty words do not auto-complete.

Although the search results do look nice with their images and non-standard looking search results I’m not a fan. For starters what is the most relevant search result as compared to my search? I assume it’s the result in the top left position, now what about the second most relevant result according to Cuil? Is it immediately under the top left result or to the right of it? Or are all of the results on the first page equally relevant to my search terms? With Google, Yahoo and MSN you know upon first glance exactly what is deemed to be the most relevant, where as with Cuil I am left guessing.

The layout and look of Cuil is very web 2.0ish and pretty but in the world of search all that matters is result relevancy and currently Cuil appears to be far behind Google in this regard. When searching for the term “oilers” on google.ca, google.com and on cuil.com Both google.ca and google.com brought up the Edmonton Oilers website but cuil.com brought up a freeservers.com site entitled Cosmic Oilers that contains 2 instances of the word oilers (title and text) on the entire page. The Edmonton Oilers website comes up either as the 9th or 7th search result depending on how you count while the Oilers forums are either 4th or 9th. Currently cuil.com isn’t even indexing itself while a quick search on Google returns not only news related to Cuil but the cuil.com website as well.

Granted I only checked the search term oilers and other search terms may yield better results and with time I’m sure that the Cuil algorithm will change to return more relevant results but as it is now Google is still the superior search engine.

Currently in its present state Cuil is much like the knockout blonde with the big set of tits that walks into the room, very pretty to look at but you just have a feeling she is going to be dumber than shit to talk to.

Googles newest product Knol has been taken out of hiding and has been opened up for the public to now see and play with. Knol is best described as a verified Wikipedia of sorts where the author of each Knol is verified through either credit card or by phone. No longer can the author of content hide behind the anonymity of the web but is rather thrust into the spotlight as you are shown exactly who has authored each Knol. In theory this should provide users with high quality content.

Knol also uses many social aspects as well to help further build each Knol. By default a system similar to Wikipedia called open collaboration (that the author can later change to closed) has been implemented where others can contribute information to the Knol. Differing from Wikipedia is that the original author of the Knol must approve the changes before they go live. This type of moderation should keep the vandals clear of tampering with pages. Using ideas from blogging platforms Knol also allows for commenting and rankings allowing for community input and hopefully improvement into that Knol.

Knol sounds all fine and handy and I’m sure most Google fanboys will be praising the virtues and ringing the bells of sainthood for Knol but I see it differently. In fact Knol scares the hell out of me and here is why. Google is now not only providing the search results to the end user but they are now also providing the content to the user as well. I see this as I massive conflict of interest. In the end what is going to stop Google from tweaking their search algorithm to slightly favor Knol pages over Wikipedia pages or personal blog pages or any other content pages on the same subject? I have already seen how many search terms in Google will return a YouTube video in the number one position when clearly there is better information available in the lower ranking pages. How is anyone supposed to compete against a Google owned property fairly?

Currently one of the featured Knols is by The Family Handyman Magazine (an unverified author) about Toilet Clogs. Considering that Knol just launched to the public yesterday if you search for the term toilet clogs from within Google (using google.ca) you will find that the Knol page for this comes up for the term in the number 5 slot with a wikihow article about toilet clogs in the number 6 slot. At first glance both results look very equal in value of content, both have pictures the wikihow article even has video. The wikihow article should be older than the Knol article, the wikihow article even has 2 links pointing back to it according to the Google link check. So why is it that when all things are factored in the Google Knol article ranks higher than the Wikihow article? I would think it’s because Knol is a Google property and because of this wins out against other sites of equal value.

Is the end Google Knol will probably provide high quality information to the user but at what cost to the Google search brand? If in future searches you always find the Google Knol pages in the top results many users (myself included) may feel Google is being biased towards its own brands and may in turn feel they are not being served the best possible results and are instead being spoon fed what Google feels to be the best results. Google Knol may be the mistake that allows other search engines to gain ground on Google if this proves to be true as in the end all the user really wants is the best result possible to help them find what they are looking for quickly and efficiently.

Further Reading
Wired
Search Engine Land
Google Blog

Today while doing some research into an upcoming post on the human-powered search engine Mahalo and as I was comparing search terms and results between that of Mahalo and Google I ran into an issue that can only be described as a Mahalo Fail. I was using Firefox 3.1 with the Mahalo Share 1.4 plugin (shows Mahalo Notes where the Google Ads would typically be displayed) installed and searching on Google using the term oilers (my favourite hockey team) the Mahalo notes page that came up was for the Flames. As any hockey fan knows the Flames is the divisional and geographical rivals of the Oilers making the Mahalo Notes display the exacto of actual information I was searching for. What’s Mahalos next trick? Will searching for heaven in Google result in the  Mahalo notes displaying Hell?

To be fair I actually do like Mahalo and when searching for oilers directly within the Mahalo site it did return relavant results relating the the Oilers hockey team. But if Mahalo wants users to install and use not only their Firefox plugin but their search engine as well mistakes like this must not happen as it shows that a human powered search is simply no match for the mighty Google search algorithms.

Google oilers Search

Mahalo oilers Search

My favorite Firefox theme is now available and working on Firefox 3. The Noia 2 eXtreme is currently at release candidate 3 but from what I have seen it looks like it is ready for a full release. If you install only one theme for your Firefox setup than Noia 2 eXtreme should be it. For screen shots or to download click here

Matt Cutts, Google Webmaster Central Blog and The Official Google Blog are all now reporting that the Google search algorithm has changed and now has the ability to index Adobe Flash Files.  According to Google you can expect some of the following changes:

Q: Which Flash files can Google better index now?
We’ve improved our ability to index textual content in SWF files of all kinds. This includes Flash “gadgets” such as buttons or menus, self-contained Flash websites, and everything in between.

Q: What content can Google better index from these Flash files?
All of the text that users can see as they interact with your Flash file. If your website contains Flash, the textual content in your Flash files can be used when Google generates a snippet for your website. Also, the words that appear in your Flash files can be used to match query terms in Google searches.

Along with the indexing of text contained within flash files Google will now be able to follow URLs from within the flash documents this will allow flash websites to now optimize their internal link strategies.

I think that it’s about time Google was able to index text contained within flash files but from a accessibility and usability standpoint this may be a bad thing. Currently most developers with any knowledge of SEO would stay away from flash for fear of not being indexed by the search engines. Now with this obstacle out of the way I fear we may see a new rise of the huge loading, mystery meat navigation, ego stroking flash pages of yesteryear.

Developers who now wish to jump on the Flash bandwagon once again will still need to remember that just because Google can now read text it doesn’t mean that user accessibility can be sacrificed. Users with disabilities who depend on screen readers and users still on dial up connections may still need an alternate quick loading static text only site created to allow them better access and usability within your site.