I just gave the new search engine Cuil a try and am baffled. I typed in my name “Tina Roth Eisenberg” and the first result is a link to my portfolio site with it is a picture of me as a little kid. (Can you believe that hair cut?) I have NO IDEA where this picture is being pulled from. Can somebody explain to me where cuil made this connection and most of all, who scanned this and put it online? I am sure it wasn’t my mom or dad. Interesting.
Oh boy, a big thanks to Filip, who found the source of the image. I can’t believe I forgot I provided Cookie with the above image for the ‘contributors page‘. (Nice hat, by the way, Joanna!)
Could it possibly have been a school photo that someone from your class scanned and cropped? (That would make me feel weird, personally, but maybe it’s possible…)
Jul 30th, 2008 / 10:07 am
Don’t worry, that’s just the way cuil works. Actually that’s how good it is. Wanna hear something really funny? It can’t even find itself :D http://soshable.com/cuil-search-engine-fail/
Jul 30th, 2008 / 10:08 am
Ironically if you search my company name, the logo comes up associated with a whole bunch of stuff, but our company doesn’t. I’m not quite sure the point of this, but it’s kinda wierd having your identity applied to other search results…
i’ve emailed asking them about this but as yet have had no response
Jul 30th, 2008 / 10:15 am
You can find the photo here:
http://www.cookiemag.com/magazine/blogs/bloggers
Jul 30th, 2008 / 10:22 am
There’s been a big Cuil debate going on at FriendFeed too. It’s early on, but I get the same mixed results. Very old content and some that’s not even relevant. They may have developed that algorithm a little too well and overshot a good target search.
Jul 30th, 2008 / 10:28 am
@alex, we’ve had the same odd results. Our company’s product images show up for websites that don’t even carry our product. And the image used for our own results, though it’s on our site, seems incredibly random.
Jul 30th, 2008 / 5:01 pm
Not Cuil dude. no spelling suggestion? lots of “we didn’t find any results for…” Maybe, if I’m really bored I’d use it. Never if I want to actually get something done.
Jul 30th, 2008 / 5:31 pm
I’m a huge fan of new search technology and I have to admit CUIL left me cold and scratching my head….
I want to know what kind of beta testing they did before releasing this into the wild.
YIKES.
Jul 30th, 2008 / 6:30 pm
Why oh why does Command Shift F3 have such a big presence on CUIL search results?
Jul 31st, 2008 / 8:52 am