Cuil, pronounced “cool,” is a new search engine that promises a more comprehensive and efficient way to search the Internet than Google. This innovative approach to search is said to combine the biggest Web index with content-based relevance methods, results organized by ideas, and complete user privacy.

There’s no end of companies that have been trying to take on Google as a search destination e.g Hakia, Mahalo and Search Wikia. You can add to that list other companies like Gigaweb and Exalead. None of them have made a dent in Google’s share.

Indeed, the established players of Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask.com — all of whom have established quality search products — haven’t dented Google either. So what makes Cuil worthy of special attention?

For one, Cuil has an impressive pedigree with its three founders: Tom Costello of IBM’s WebFountain project, plus Anna Patterson and Russell Power of Google’s TeraGoogle project, Google’s massive search index. Cuil also counts former AltaVista founder Louis Monier — who later went to eBay and then Google — as part of the team.

These people know search. In particular, they know on-the-firing line, heavy duty, industrial strength search. Not only that, they’re unleashing what appears to be a comprehensive service that anyone can use. Indeed, Google already did a blog post in reaction to Cuil and its size claims on Friday, before Cuil even launched or those claims became public. If Google’s paying that much attention, then anyone should.

What Cuil Offers

There are four major areas that Cuil is putting out to distinguish itself from other services. These are:

• Big web index
• Unique relevance algorithm
• Unique results display
• Privacy

I’m going to dive into each of these areas in depth, to examine the importance of them as well as dissect some of the misconceptions and PR spin that they also have.

To read the full story, visit searchengineland.com