The internet search engine that trades under an Irish name — Cuil.com

THE world’s latest and, its owners claim, biggest search engine has been named after the Irish word for knowledge.

Cuil.com’s search index spans 120 billion web pages. To put that into context while Google no longer reveals the breadth of its index, three years ago it covered 8.2 billion web pages.

The new site has been co-founded by former Google employee Anna Patterson and her husband, Irishman Tom Costello.

Ms Patterson joined Google in 2004 when the company purchased a search engine that she had built to upgrade its own technology.

Now she, with her husband, has developed technology that they claim will beat all the other search engines for quality.

“Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance,” the website states. “When we find a page with your keywords, we stay on that page and analyse the rest of its content, its concepts, their inter-relationships and the page’s coherency. Then we offer you helpful choices and suggestions until you find the page you want and that you know is out there. We believe that analysing the web rather than users is a more useful approach.”

Among the site’s functions is a “drill down” section. After the user performs a search, a panel may appear on the right side of the screen entitled “Explore By Category” with a list of subjects related to the search.

“If you roll over a category, it will open and show refinements related to your search. If you click on one, Cuil will direct you to this additional information. By looking at these suggestions, you may discover search data, concepts, or related areas of interest that you hadn’t expected,” the founders say. They also make much of the fact they do not store any details about the user.

“We don’t collect data about you and your habits, With Cuil, your search history is private,” the site says.