How to Promote a New Search Engine the Cuil Way

Posted by Mihaela Lica as Featured

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Cuil beggar begging for help. Cuil, the “new search engine” that prides itself to be searching and indexing more pages than Google (as IF!) has come up with an interesting new marketing strategy (sorta!).

Because I hate long introductions I reveal it from the start: Cuil is comment spamming, or link spamming… or call it as you will! (?)

The image below (click to enlarge) reveals what my Akismet caught among cialis and cheap flights from Australia.

The highlight reads “new search engine” and the links in the comment lead directly to Cuil as you can see. You know how much I enjoy giving people second chances, so I give Cuil the chance to reply and explain this by linking and ping backing their most recent blog entry. This before heading up to Google to report them for being bad boys!

Naturally, I have some explanations myself:

Cuil is so desperate for attention – they know that a blogger will notice and write about their new SEO strategy. Bad publicity is better than no publicity, isn’t it? Besides, Cuil enjoys being hammered to the end of the search spectrum. (!)
Google hates Cuil so much that they engaged in black hat practices that will give the search giant the excuse to dismiss Cuil from their search results
Someone else hates Cuil and they want to see them dropping from Googles’s SERPs

What do you think? Is Cuil up to evil deeds? Or should we look for the truth… “out there?”

Amazon.com Widgets

30 Responses

Alina Popescu

December 15th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
1

It’s either spam, or they are stupid enough to hire someone to help them with their social media promotion who would choose such methods. Either way, this looks really bad!

Alina Popescu’s last blog post..How to reply to questions about your competitors?
Pearl

December 15th, 2008 at 10:38 pm
2

hmm The strange and funny thing I caught is the email this person has used in that comment!! He is using gmail to tell you about their new search engine cuil? From that alone I feel this person might not be from Cuil, but then again, who knows? You could try emailing atxam2007 and see what he says about it

Pearl’s last blog post..Interesting Posts Around the Web
Vince Sollitto

December 16th, 2008 at 1:04 am
3

Sorry to ruin the story (especially since I love the graphic) but this isn’t us. Don’t know who or why but it isn’t Cuil….
Alhan Keser

December 16th, 2008 at 6:38 am
4

My father’s website was similarly spammed with the same Cuil junk from a different email address. I tried contacting the person, but apparently the email address is not valid or has been deleted.
I published a post about it on my blog as well. Apparently this is not the first time this has happened. What is Cuil silent about this?

Alhan Keser’s last blog post..Cuil Spamming? Seriously? How pathetic.
Mihaela Lica

December 16th, 2008 at 11:40 am
5

@ Vince – you didn’t ruin the story. Accidents like this are ruining Cuil’s reputation and you should take a stand and make an official statement – see that I am not the first to report this. I don’t want to start researching for you guys, but the following links will prove my point (no, I am not related in any way with these bloggers, not even in a social media group):

http://steven-dowd.co.uk/2008/09/11/cuil-spam/
http://www.alhankeser.com/cuil-comment-spamming/

And because many people report spam in the results from Cuil, I slowly start doubting Cuil’s innocence…

http://rjdudley.com/blog/CuilGatewayToSpam.aspx
http://www.reddit.com/comments/6u1g9/i_dont_understand_what_cuil_is_doing/c04v6ym

Yes, I know you announced improvements, as well as “dropping” spam pages. This is not the point. Someone either wants your back or you hired the wrong persons to do your social marketing and you don’t even know it. I cannot speak about PR… obviously so far Cuil went from one PR failure to another. Even your response, as candid as it is, is failing to acknowledge the problem.
Mihaela Lica

December 16th, 2008 at 11:42 am
6

@Alhan – funny, isn’t it? Apparently there are many people trying to ruin Cuil’s reputation!
Vince Sollitto

December 16th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
7

@Mihaela — To be clear(er), this spam is not the work of Cuil or some supposed incompetent social marketer; we have nothing to do with it. Other commenters on other blogs have speculated that this spammer is mixing in legitimate websites to disguise his (or her) true intentions or clients. In any event, it’s not cool — or Cuil.

@Alhan — We aren’t trying to be silent about this and will post a note about this in our own company blog shortly, as well.
Mihaela Lica

December 16th, 2008 at 11:32 pm
8

That’s the reply I was expecting the first time, Vince! I am sorry this happens to you guys, and more sorry about the negative reviews you received the first time, when you launched. Note that I did not write any review of Cuil as a search engine yet. I was not impressed, but as a rule I do not criticize alphas. You need time to perfect your product and I am a patient consumer. Just one SEO/PR tip – saying that Cuil indexes more pages than Google doesn’t do you any good. I personally don’t believe you guys have more money and more servers than Google to store so much data. Also, quatity if not backed up by quality is pointless. Thus: I don’t care how many pages you index if the results are close to irrelevant. You need to find a different way to attract users.

Another PR/branding mistake (although you do have former Google experts in the team) is to compare an alpha startup with an entity that has been in business for more than 10 years. I spoke with Jimmy Wales and a few other search engine developers and they also admit that it is stupid to promise the new Google. I don’t need a new Google. No one does. We need a search engine that does what we want and delivers what we want. From the potpourri of search engines that try to compete with/against Google, I see no potential winner – other than maybe Wikia Search if Jimbo manages to engage the community again, as he did it for Wikipedia. Other than that, realistically speaking, your only chance (and I speak for all the new search engines) is to get together and try to come up with not a “Google killer” but with a true community search engine.

Update to add: wow, Vince… I envy you for being Arnold’s spokesman! So we work in the same branch after all… I was a PR for the Romanian Ministry of Defense. Switching from offline PR to online was difficult for me too. From one colleague to another, if you need my help, just drop me an email (address in the blog header).
Phil Butler

December 17th, 2008 at 12:39 am
9

I love search. After testing about 40 search engines and helping make Powerset, hakia and a couple of others famous, I have come to believe Mig, it will take a near act of God for any save social search champion Search Wikia to make even a dent in Google’s lead.

There is one area of search that no one has sufficiently engaged in, and we are working on that as I type this. As for Cuil, well I would be glad to talk with them and hear what they have to say about their “Wizard of OZ” indexing or whatever it is that will make them a Google killer. As Mig suggests, it might be a good idea to talk to people who have talked to all the rest and filter out what to do.

Hey, that would provide relevance in a search engine development roadmap! On the spamming issue, it smells suspiciously like an overzealous college intern set upon the forum and blog circuit. Just my gut feeling.

Always,
Phil
Ryan @ Linkbuildr

December 17th, 2008 at 1:28 am
10

Glad to hear this wasn’t Cuil. I today got hit with the same comment from the B-class IP range that showed up for you. I wouldn’t have thought for a second a company like this would be out doing this.

At least askimet is still doing its job

Ryan @ Linkbuildr’s last blog post..Check Backlinks With Linkdiagnosis.com
Chris Cree

December 17th, 2008 at 5:19 am
11

And in a minor stroke of irony the two links to Cuil & their blog in this post are more valuable than the original spam comment link would have been.

Just read Cuil’s blog post response to the spaming and I’m not impressed. Their proposed solution of recommending bloggers use the NoFollow attribute as a solution to spam seems out of touch.

Comment spam has done nothing but increase massively since NoFollow was first suggested by Google. It is wholly ineffective and does nothing but punish legitimate commenters.

Chris Cree’s last blog post..Sarah Palin in Savannah
Costin

December 17th, 2008 at 10:25 am
12

The search engines war will never end. Sometimes it gets spicy (like now) or fade…either way, all they try to do is make money. I mean, more money than their competitors that is.

I’m in the internet “business” from quite a long time, and I haven’t yet found a reliable search engine. Each and every one of them is full of BS(read spam content, etc…). There are many “SEO” that think that promoting their piece of crap websites and reach the first page in a SE would mean that they’re sooo good that they’ll be think of as some SEO gurus or something. I don’t give a damn about them. But I do give a damn about the results I get when searching for something, and if that something that i’m looking for would be found on the 3rd or the 4th page in SERP because the first pages are the result of these “SEO gurus” I’m very pissed off.

As about this “incident”, I don’t believe a word of what Vince Sollitto says; just because I just can’t. I wasn’t born yesterday. Nobody’s so lame on this planet to start spamming blogs and linking to CUIL, and I mean NOBODY(except CUIL, of course).

And of course, what they can do about it? Write a post, throw it on their blog saying that a crazy spammer(well, this is not a crazy spammer, maybe a CUIL fanatic?) has started to post comments on different blogs promoting CUIL. And this is BS. period.

Costin’s last blog post..Creating a bridge between JUNE 1.1 and JUNE 2.0
Vince Sollitto

December 17th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
13

@Costin — I agree that SEO-influenced SERPs can be annoying, provided they are demoting the results you really are seeking. And spam is an ongoing challenge facing all search engines. I’m sorry you find yourself unable to believe my post but let me assure you this comment spam is not the work of Cuil or anyone associated with us. Other folks have commented on other blogs that this particular spammer is seeking to “promote” a number of sites; it appears he (or she) is just including our URL in order to hide the true targets. I agree it would be extremely odd — and lame — to spam comment forums in an intentional effort to promote a search engine. That’s why we suspect this is not the true intention here.
Mihaela Lica

December 17th, 2008 at 9:27 pm
14

That’s not even your post, Vince. That’s Anna’s. I too don’t agree with nofollow, BTW. I also see that you cannot offer a valid explanation – not even a supposition – as to why would someone select Cuil for their evil deeds out of all online entities? Again: I don’t believe it is you guys, but somehow the more I think about this a doubt slowly shadows my thoughts…

Update to add: besides, you should have the courtesy to answer comments on your blog. Don’t you realize that we are your users?
pearl

December 17th, 2008 at 9:49 pm
15

this is a sad situation I guess and I’m not sure what can be done to correct it but Vince and crew definitely need to do some reputation management … and that one short post doesn’t seem enough..

I’d like to read options to correct such a situation Mig

pearl’s last blog post..Interesting Posts Around the Web
Mihaela Lica

December 17th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
16

I already offered Vince my help, Pearl, but obviously he ignored my comment. Of course, I will write a follow up on this entry. A short “how to” – more free advice for search engines – and later I’ll probably have to write another “The Image of Leadership” post. Note to Vince: you might wanna read that one.
Iamsgf

December 18th, 2008 at 11:01 am
17

I am wondering what type of comment it is. Who posted that even didn’t bother to write something in it. Anyhow I am really disappointed with the search engine in real and with their result page styles.

Iamsgf’s last blog post..Sea World – Queensland, Australia
Mihaela Lica

December 18th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
18

That’s because it is a spam comment.:) It doesn’t matter what one writes in a spam comment – if it makes sense it is no longer spam…
Omer

December 19th, 2008 at 12:32 am
19

I dont think its cuil, after all, spamming the industry insiders blogs isnt going to make Joe the Plumbers (or anybody) start using cuil. They made a mistake starting off with too much hype at launch, but give them a break, give them a chance to swim or sink on their own merits as they develop cuil.

By the way, how much storage would you need for a 4 bill page search engine (just curious (Im not a techie)?
Mihaela Lica

December 19th, 2008 at 10:02 am
20

It depends on the depth of the data… you could as well ask how much storage do you need for the whole web…
If Google is buying half a million servers each year (and honestly I don’t know how many of those are used for the search engine, but considering that search is their bread and butter I’d say we are not talking about 100…) how many servers should a search engine that indexes “more pages than Google” need?

Forrester Research’s Gillett estimates that Google, owner of the world’s biggest Web search engine, is buying half a million servers each year, while Microsoft’s (MSFT) annual consumption is as much as 200,000 servers.

see source.
Mihaela Lica

December 19th, 2008 at 10:35 am
21

Oh, Omer … I forgot! I gave them more than a break. I gave them plenty of free advice in this post and in the comments. It’s my job and my duty to my readers to inform about search engines, PR and other online issues. But now I have an issue with their overall attitude so if next you’ll find a “top ten reasons why cuil will fail with a boom” don’t be surprised.
Omer

December 19th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
22

Thanks for the info Mihaela

Omer
Canon

December 24th, 2008 at 6:41 am
23

Well i don’t know much about cuil, but i heard that the founder is ex-google. So i don’t think they do some stupid strategy to promote their search engine. IMHO “Someone else hates Cuil and they want to see them dropping from Googles’s SERPs”

Canon’s last blog post..2004 Mazda Truck Quick Tips
Abdulrehman

January 29th, 2009 at 7:06 am
24

Damn, that’s raw for a new search engine. Comment spamming, even as a blogger I would *never* opt that!

Abdulrehman’s last blog post..Why do you want to Make Money Online?
Ski Resorts

February 2nd, 2009 at 11:21 am
25

Cuil, does this mean a search startup wants you to believe they can lead you to better results and they cannot even spell their own name?.
Fresno Wedding Directory

February 4th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
26

I was having huge, different problems with cuil.I found tons of errors in my httpd logs. They were for crazy, deep, nested requests where they had bunched together many different directories from my site and requested pages in these new random areas that didn’t exist.
Flights

February 14th, 2009 at 11:27 pm
27

Cuil has been going downhill since the moment it was launched. Check out the ‘Cuil Fail: Traffic Nearly Hits Rock Bottom’ post over at Techcrunch – not a good investment!
Shaw

February 21st, 2009 at 6:49 am
28

Cuil has to be the funniest mistake since Netscape.

Shaw’s last blog post..Third Confirmed Dead From Avian Bird Flu
Sharon

February 22nd, 2009 at 7:46 am
29

Desperate times means taking desperate measures. I had forgotten about the easily forgettable Cuil !
Lyndsey

February 23rd, 2009 at 12:24 pm
30

I think the concept is interesting but there is nothing that makes the usability of Cuil any better or that separates itself from search engines like Google, YAHOO and MSN.

Lyndsey’s last blog post..44th President to Be Sworn In on Tuesday January 20,2008