How did news of Cuil spread so fast?

[MACSP]

Site launched yesterday. Google returns over 2 million results for it. It's been posted on all the major blogs, new networks picked it up.

Besides the fact that the concept of a "Google killer" is exciting, how do you think their PR department managed to pull this off?

(PS, I don't think social news sites is the sole answer. Even before d1gg picked them up, the story has propagated all over the web.)

[MACSP]

Also, I don't necessarily think word of mouth was a major pushing factor either. Reading the comments of the many users who tried the engine indicates they weren't very impressed.

[Rexibit]

Ex-google workers start their own search engine, news media covers it, blogs then pick up and cover it, etc. That is how it spread so fast, the hype.

[MACSP]

Ex-google workers start their own search engine, news media covers it, blogs then pick up and cover it, etc. That is how it spread so fast, the hype.

Where do you think they planted the seed? Simply mailed out a bunch of PR's?

[ruby-lang]

Slow week, good PR agency. Apparently they focused on mainstream media, knowing that anything with the word "Google" appearing on MSM will spread across blogs like fire in a savanna.

And it's a David vs Goliath story, everybody loves these. Even when David manages to knock himself out with the rock.

[mmj]

Blogs.

They are all competing with each other to get the big stories before other blogs do, even if they are a few hours behind and the stories have circulated the web many times already. They are also carefree about copyright and 'fair use', using liberal amounts of copy-and-paste in what amounts to a freeform 'content syndication'. They use feed readers and subscribe to hundreds of other blogs, and pick and choose which stories they'll repeat on their own blog. And they feed services like slashdot, digg and technorati with which they have a symbiotic relationship - in return, one lucky blogger gets a whole lot of traffic, like winning the lottery.

Press releases may have sparked it, but they aren't responsible for the amount of coverage and the speed at which it spreads. It could just have easily been started by a prominent blogger mentioning it and others picking up on that.

I'd say that what was responsible for its rapid spread would be its news-worthiness. In this case it'd be the fact that it was ex-Google employees, and that they claimed it was 'bigger than Google'. If you or I had created the same search engine and made the same claims it wouldn't have been the same. So I would have to respectfully disagree that it was due to it being a David and Goliath story, as not any David could have created such coverage. It was particular to them being ex-Google and trying to out-Google Google.

[Dallas Broker]

cuil spread so fast there servers crashed on debut...i was really impressed to see registered user on one of my real estate sites that listed cuil as referrer, all within 12 hours of launch.

[jabo]

I have read mostly about it in blogs. Visited it and tried it, it does show different results than to those of Google, tried my keywords and none of my site shows up the same way that it does in google. But it is not the reason that I am not impressed with it. A lot of people who have used it were not impressed at all. I have tried to submit my site and submitting sites needs an email instead of other SE wherein you just have to fill up the form.

[Dallas Broker]

I have read mostly about it in blogs. Visited it and tried it, it does show different results than to those of Google, tried my keywords and none of my site shows up the same way that it does in google. But it is not the reason that I am not impressed with it. A lot of people who have used it were not impressed at all. I have tried to submit my site and submitting sites needs an email instead of other SE wherein you just have to fill up the form.

I was just talking about this in another forum, my city real estate results are about 10 positions off from Google. I'm 7 or 8 on 1st page in google and 15-16 page 2 cuil. Also, they have image for my site that is not even on my site, not sure where it came from. they still have lots of work to do, and as TIME said, google doesn't have anything to worry about for some TIME, I would be more worried if I was MSN or Yahoo, but still not worried...

[motherknucker]

google intentionally promoted cuil
now they will kill it

[fpcom]

The press loves these underdog stories against the Goliath. Once one picked it up - they all did.

[bbolte]

I saw it on CNN before I noticed any blog stories about it. The web seemed to hit all at once though - even SP had something up in their blogs. I agree with all the others, Google tie-in/killer was the driving force.

[InFloW]

I knew of it for ages due to it's silly twiceler bot killing web sites left and right with it's poor crawling. I knew of it actually being live thanks to slashdot, but it seemed like it was the #1 story on every single site you visited.

[EC Suite_Russell]

I see Cuil threads on every board and a lot of blogs. What's most interesting to me is that for something that so many people want to talk about almost everything I hear is negative.

[Dsite]

I believe alot of people heard about cuil at forums like this one and passed on the information to other users.