Go on, give it a test, search for something really obscure. Try out Cuil - billed as the next generation search engine, the Google beater, the next big thing, the search engine that indexes 121 billion pages.

All the hype around this comes from the three people behind this project. 3 Tech genius with two who is responsible for Google’s search teams. With that pedigree, you must think Cuil is very good.

Now that’s only half the story. In business, your product is only as good as the marketing behind it. And behind Cuil is Manning Selvage & Lee, one of the most respected PR firms in the world (they are part of Publicis). So the marketing buzz you hear about Cuil isn’t there by accident.

So what about the result? Does things rank well? Other then the “Cuil(cool)” design. It’s hard to say without a blind test, but what from my obscure searches done on verticals I’m very familiar with, I have to say of the top 10 results, there is at least one that is very relevent, which is actually saying it’s just as good as any other search engine.

Search is made up of three areas. Spidering, Indexing and Ranking. The first two is easy, big server, smart spiders, lots of investement and you are there. It’s ranking results accuratly thats the hard part. Cuil may index 3 times more pages then Google, but unless those results get ranked accuratly, it’s only use is good PR.

I think the jury is still out on who’s better, but I will give Cuil a chance. Let’s see how well it uses on site relevency to rank the results and see how it compares with user generated results in the future.

Note: About Cuil

(Taken from: http://www.cuil.com/info/news_press/)

Cuil (pronounced COOL) is a search engine that combines the largest Web index with content-based relevance methods, organized results, and complete user privacy. The company’s next generation approach to search is the result of proprietary breakthroughs in search architecture and ranking algorithms. Cuil’s employees have extensive experience in search, having worked at Google, IBM, eBay, AltaVista, Stanford University, the Internet Archive and other technology companies and research centers. Cuil is located in Menlo Park, California and has received series A funding from Tugboat Ventures and Greylock Partners, and series B funding from Madrone Capital Partners. Cuil derives its name from an old Irish word for knowledge, reflecting the background of co-founder and CEO, Tom Costello, who hails from Drogheda, Ireland. For more information, please visit www.cuil.com.

I’ve just participated my first ever Google JuneTune online live chat, asking questions to a wide panel of Googlers from Matt Cutts to John Mueller - who did a excellent presentation on personalisation.

The JuneTune session does seem to be quite informative on the surface of things, offering an engaging forum to over 400 webmasters who joined in the session. Topics ranged from 301 redirects to Site Sculpting to confirming that “there is a future for SEO (Matt Cutts)” and debunking the myth that Google manually edit results for specific sites (apparently they can manually penalise sites)

However, I have to say in terms of the answers to some of the key questions were a little lacking in specifics. Here’s my favouite example:

Q: is position SIX a penalty?
A: Position 6 is always between 5 & 7. One site has to be at #6.

Now, whilst it’s great to state the obvious, I think many experienced search marketers will find most of the answers taken directly from the Google Help pages, without offering further insight.

Still, I think its a step in the right direction and I look forward to the next session!

Update:

Here’s the Full transcript of the session.

Download the MP3 audio of the session. Curtsey of Search Engine Round Table

For your reference, Here’s my standard response to clients requesting further Keyword research:

“After looking under the bonnet, I’m going to leverage the granularity of the PPC keyword list so we can drill down and pre-prepare a high altitude view of an SEO strategy to summarise our 360 degree thinking. I’ll have it ready for the end of the day and we can touch base about this offline. Going forward, I will give it my 110% and want to make sure we’d not let the grass grow too long on this one, the idea is that we ramp things up in a strucutred way. My door is always open on this issue, but feel free to capture your colleges with a idea shower at any time.”

Reference: BBC buzzwords

Image by ianloic via Flickr

A new version of AdWords Editor will be launching this week. Based on advertiser feedback, the new version will include new features that were not previously available. These include the facility to add or edit mobile ads, select and post only specific campaigns and the ability to download and view performance statistics for the dates you choose.

New features for Version 4.0

• Mobile ads: View, add, and update your mobile ads on the new Mobile Ads tab.
• Campaign posting: Select and post only specific campaigns, or post all changes at once.
• Right-click menus: In the tree view and data view, use the new right-click menus for adding, editing, and deleting.
• Custom date ranges: Download and view performance statistics for the dates you choose.
• AdWords Editor stores up to five custom date ranges.
• Paste to multiple campaigns: Select multiple destination campaigns for campaign negative keywords and sites via the Edit menu > Paste Special.
• Copy targeting settings: Copy and paste language and location targeting settings between campaigns.
• Copy only keywords or sites: Copy a list of just your keywords or targeted sites, without the destination URL, bid, or other columns in the data view.
• Status in Add Multiple tools: Pause, delete, or resume keywords, sites, or ads with the new ’status’ field.
• Matching options in Add/Update and Delete Multiple Keywords tools
  • Use standard AdWords keyword matching option formats (broad, “phrase”, exact], and -negative).
  • Add or delete negative keywords along with regular (positive) keywords.
• Capitalization on Keywords tab: If two keywords in an ad group only differ by capitalization (such as “Italian Food” and “italian food”), they will be flagged on the Keywords tab.
• No end date option: Set a specific end date for your campaign, or select ‘none’ to have a campaign run indefinitely.

Additional improvements for Version 4.0

• More languages: This is the first release of AdWords Editor for Czech, Hebrew, Polish, Portuguese (Portugal), English (Australia), and Turkish.
• Budget Optimizer campaigns: Previously, campaigns using the Google Budget Optimizer (TM) could not be updated in AdWords Editor. Now it’s possible to edit ad groups and keywords within these campaigns. (CPC bids are still managed automatically, and therefore cannot be edited.)
• Better menu access keys for non-English locales.