Friday, August 15, 2008

I'm Definitely Not Cuil

There are some points at which my day job and my real self and even the blog me converge.

I'm a web monkey much of the time, so when a new search engine comes on the scene, it's important for me to get familiar with it.

That of course means I need to do a search with myself as the subject. It's not vanity, it's...

...research?

Anyway there's a new search engine and Google challenger called Cuil and pronounced "cool." I'm not sure a verb form exists yet. Cuiling? I don't know if we'll get that far.

It's basically supposed to offer a little more description of sites and better privacy than Google, I believe.

I don't show up so well. I'm always competing for placement with the myriad of other Sidneys out there including former Ambassador Sidney Williams and the late mystery writer Sidney Williams, author of such works as The Body in the Blue Room.

In the first screen of results none of us fare very well. Ambassador Sidney Williams appears in a press release from the Clinton administration era. The other writer Sidney doesn't show up, and I'm represented by my old Opera blog and a used copy of Azarius from a UK bookseller. Neither is too bad. British Isle shoppers have the opportunity to enjoy my backlist, after all.
The Opera has a cross link here and a link to my home page.

I think that'll do for now. If Cuil looks like it's catching on I'll figure out optimization.

For the moment I'm off to search Charles and Wayne, just to see if they're cuiler than I am.




10 comments:

Miladysa said...

I'm off to check that out!

Google worries me...

Lana Gramlich said...

I've heard of Cuil. I'm tired of chasing after the latest thing, even if it's just a search site. *L* Of course, if it turns out to be more effective, I'll switch over like everyone else. 'Til then, I'll keep on Googlin'. ;)

Charles Gramlich said...

Cuiling? Lol. I'm lucky, there are not many other Charles Gramlich's out there. There's a guy who has directed Shakespear's plays. And some guy who is on a school board or something. Not much else.

Wayne Allen Sallee said...

Hey, Sid. I did check out Cuil, and really the only comparison one can do IS to check one's ownself first. Reminds me of the late 90s and doing a name search by Lycos or Hotbot. I'll stick with Google for now, but I guess competition is OK. So, if someone stops using it for awhile, is it a "cuiling off period."?

Wayne Allen Sallee said...

PS Sid, why are those of us answering hours apart or minutes apart in time?

Sidney said...

I think those times are actually fairly accurate relative to my time zone. Milady commented yesterday (Friday) at 11:01 a.m., though.

Shauna Roberts said...

I and the other Shauna Robertses I know of showed up well, but "Shauna S. Roberts," my prolific nonfiction writer persona, had only three hits.

Steve Malley said...

I'm used to sharing my name with a hockey coach. My, uh, 'research' shows a stop-smoking guy beating us both out.

Cuil is insolent. It shall be... liquidated.

Stewart Sternberg (half of L.P. Styles) said...

I have such mixed feelings about Cuil. I've used it and tried liking it. However, I have to confess to being a google slut. The one problem I have with google..well two actually..is steeped in google's business practices. I was not enamored with the decision google had to work with China to censor its peoples' web activity (in some cases googles' cooperation led to arrests and perhaps execution) nor am I a fan of google saving data of American citizens and cooperating with the American government.

Chris Benjamin said...

i wish my name was a little less common. when i search my name the top hit is a website of sermons by a southern baptist preacher.

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