The new contender on the search engines market, Cuil has drawn some mixed reactions from media and analysts. Cuil was developd by Stanford professor Tom Costello and his wife, former Google search architect Anna Patterson. The Cuil founding staff also includes former Googlers Russell Power and Louis Monier. The company claims to have a larger index than any other search engine, with about 120 billion web pages.
However, it seems like size isn’t everything and so far the media was far from impressed by this newcomer.

For example, Erick Schonfeld from TechCrunch.com notes that the results returned by Cuil.com aren’t so great. “The results Cuil returns aren’t particularly great, and sometimes completely off the mark. For instance, a search for “Cuil” doesn’t even bring up a link to itself on the first page of results,” he noted “And when Cuil tries to pair images with sets of search results, it often chooses seemingly random images to accompany a set of results,” Schonfeld reported.

However, Michael Arrington wrote that Cuil.com is a good search engine, but there is still room for improvement. “Based on our test queries Cuil is an excellent search engine, particularly since it is all of an hour old. But it doesn’t appear to have the depth of results that Google has, despite their claims. And the results are not nearly as relevant,” Arrington noted.

He also explained his impression with a clear example. “A search for Dog returns 280 million  results on Cuil and 498 million  on Google. Judging relevance of results is subjective, but Google returns Wikipedia as the first result, then dog.com. Cuil returns Dog.com, wikipedia isn’t listed on the first page of results. Both are meaningful results, but Google is better.”

By contrast, Chris Gampat from PC Magazine seems to be satisfied with the new search engine, but he also concluded that its search accuracy has to improve to match Google.

“A quick hands-on with Cuil showed that the best thing about the new search engine so far is its interface and design. Searching isn't quiet as effective yet as Google on most subjects, but it's still decent if you're searching for the most popular items on that particular topic,” Gampat wrote.

Richard MacManus from ReadWriteWeb.com thinks that Cuil.com failed to match the hype that surrounded its launch. “The fact is, Cuil is a very ordinary product right now. In my own tests last night, I was left underwhelmed. Our official post today summed up our views: this is an average product that does not live up to its own hype, the NYT's hype, or the hype bestowed upon it by noted bloggers and those who thought they got a "scoop",” he notes.

Danny Sullivan, a blogger at Search Engine Land, acknowledged the pedigrees of the founders of the company. "These people know search," he wrote. "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."

TGDaily.com has concluded that Cuil is nothing more than work in progress and it doesn’t have a chance in front of Google. “Everything about Cuil appears to be work in progress. Both Powerset (which was recently acquired by Microsoft) and Cuil don't stand any chance to replace Google, Yahoo or Live Search anytime soon in our opinion,” wrote Christian Ziberg, Wolfgang Gruener  in their extensive analysis.

“Cuil is more suited to become a web directory as it presents results that mostly lead to starting sections within a web site, rather than to the specific piece of content,’ they concluded.

Clint Boulton from eWeek.com considers that despite its shortcomings, Cuil.com could be an interesting experience for users.“Here is what I think you should judge Cuil on: For most searches it works and works well, and it does not resemble a search engine beyond the first page. This gives users a unique experience that might be a little disruptive at first. When you enter a query, you get results the way you see written content from a modern Web site.” “After I kept coming back for more searches, I not only got used to it, but got to like the aesthetics of the Cuil content,” he concludes.