All of the buzz on the Internet today is zeroing in on a new potential Google-killer called Cuil. Sure, there have been plenty legitimate attempts to dethrone the search king in the past, but none of the start-ups have been run by Google alumni. I’ve had a chance to play around with it and see what it is offering, so here’s the breakdown.

The Good

• It looks great. The main page of the site is extremely simple, just like it’s big brother Google, but its dark design really helps it stand out in a crowd of other wannabe Google competitors.
• Right on the front page they are brutally honest about the number of sites that they currently have indexed (121,617,892,992 at the time of this post), which is refreshing to see.
• Finally, someone rethought how search results are displayed. No more generic-looking list of websites from one to infinity. Pages are listed in columns almost looking like a news paper or magazine. You can adjust it to display 2 or 3 columns and next to many of the listings and image related to the site appears along side the description of the site.
• Search suggestions are in-place to help you find what you’re looking for, but I haven’t yet noticed much difference between what Cuil offers and Google’s parallel feature.
• Unlike the Big Brother search engines we’re all used to, Cuil supposedly tracks absolutely none of what you do. This is great to hear for those that love their Internet anonymity.

The Bad

• Where are the key features that keep me coming back to Google? If they want to become my primary search engine, they’re going to have to integrate image and product search features.
• I mentioned earlier that along side most of the search results appears what is supposed to be a relevant image. Problem is, most of the images are in no way relevant or even taken from the site listed.
• Allow more columns! I really like how the search is displayed, but for those of us with a wide screen and high resolution, three columns still leaves a huge chunk of white on the right hand side of the screen when I’m searching. I can probably fit 4-5 columns of search results on my 20″ iMac.
• Speed. This one’s a throw-away complaint. It’s a bit sluggish thus far, but it’s also presumably getting completely pounded with traffic, so that’s to be expected. To be honest, I’m surprised it hasn’t crashed, so I guess this belongs somewhere inbetween the good and the bad. We’ll see how they hold up once the initial rush dies down.

The Ugly

• The algorithm needs desperately to be tweaked. Earlier today if I did a search for “Primakow” a few pages of this site would show up, but not the main page, whereas a search for “Evan Primakow” yielded no results. Already a few hours later “Evan Primakow” brings up a few pages of this site, but mostly random posts and not the main page.

Ultimately, it has a ton of potential. In my opinion the only thing really holding it back is the algorithm. New features will presumably be added and I’m sure even now they’re tweaking the algorithm as traffic flows through. This is the first new search engine in a very long time that really has the potential to compete with the big boys - and I hope it does just that. The industry needs a fresh look and fresh ideas, so hopefully Cuil can live up to the Internet’s expectations.