Cuil (pronounced cool) is a revolutionary new graphic-based search engine with in-depth site descriptions, that was launched on 28 July 2008. The word "cuil" is thought to be an old Celtic word meaning knowledge and hazel, which stems from the classic Finn McCuil legend. And there is no better place to start accumulating some knowledge, than here. It has already indexed over 121 billion pages and there seems no end to its ambitions. Its founders, Anna Patterson, Louis Monierall, Russell Power, all fomer Google employees and Tom Costello - CEO and of IBM ilk. Incidently, Tom is Irish himself and is also married to Anna. Between them and other prominent names, their experience in search engine architecture is immense. Their remit is to index the whole internet. Waow. Anyone looking for a new job, because they are hiring? They raised $33M in venture capital from private investors and this gave them a strong and timely foothold to launch the site.

So how does it work? Well for starters Cuil, unlike Google, is based upon rich content rather than popularity, pagerank and advertising. Cuil for everyone. Its' use of artificial intelligence in finding relevant context for your particular search is one major factor that is going to make this site a success. When you type in a word, eg. "software", you are faced with a drop-down menu that presents you with relevant suggestions such as software development, software reviews, software companies, software updates etc. Again very cuil. Now click and you see how really cuil it is. You get a slick interface with 2 or 3 columns, a neat description and top glossy images of the sites. Some people may think the descriptions are too long and more hits could fit on one page, but I don't think that really matters when you see the quality of the gifs, and the fact that some of the normal contenders are not displayed on the first page. Another point of note, is you don't get the obligatory "1000' results yet. I got 23 pages with 8 results on each page. Not so cool. But you do get more drop-down menus, tabs and roll-over definitions that really help you refine and expand your search even more. I believe quality over quantity always wins.

It has certainly made its mark already. On its first day Cuil had more than 50 million queries. Even though there may be some glitches at the moment, it offers rich and unique content on a user-friendly platform. It does not collate personal data, IP addresses or even users names, unlike other top seach engines. You can drop them an email and submit your URL too. All very very C O O L, Cuil, or even kewl.

And Webmasters should take a leaf out of their SEO (Search Engine Optimization) book, because when I checked their Alexa on August 5th they had a ranking of 1,090,420. Now it is in the Top 6,000 and climbing. For those who are interested, Cuil is supported by IBP Top 10 Optimizer. Grab yourself a free trial today and take on the big boys. Everyone wants to be the next Google. Cuil don't need to try, they are the ex-Google. Graphic search engines are the future and Cuil.com is here to stay.