Cuil, not that cool

So perhaps Cuil isn't as cool as they had made out when it was launched.

I was really enthusiastic about the Cuil search engine when it was first publicized but have returned to my 100% Google searching as it comes up with the results I am expecting, and thus increases my productivity. The Cuil features like drill-down and its well thought-out philosophy are great but get completely overshadowed by the engine's poor search results.

So how do I measure how good the results are? Well, really the way I do this is by comparing the results from Cuil to those that Google would give me. Which is probably very bad practice, but I guess that just highlights the fact Google really has become the de facto "best" search engine for most people. How many times have you heard "Google it", and how many times have you heard "Yahoo it"? See, that's what I thought.

It does leave me wondering whether in some cases it's the search engine giving poor results or me using poor search words. Perhaps the way I pick search words has changed to accomodate the way Google references its pages and that's what makes it easier for me to use Google than Cuil, for instance.

Still, Cuil does on occasion undoubtedly return disastrous results.
For instance, if I search for the following three words:
e-learning technologies karrer
I expect the first link to be the eLearning Technology blog by Tony Karrer.
Well although Cuil actually will provide a link to the blog (and not the main page at that!), it does so with the wrong picture and in fact places the correct picture under someone else's name! Ouch.

So it seems Google really does just go that extra mile... :-)

Thoughts?