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Before you say “get him and his Ivy league education”, my dealings with Harvard amount to its weekly 10-minute podcast, which doesn’t really qualify me as an alumni.

However, the latest edition of the Harvard Business Ideacast (sign up through iTunes)  - concerning the internet, the brain and the future of business - is an interesting take on brain/internet similarities. Without boring you with neurons, the most practical element is how the best content online acts like our most enriching memories: they keep coming up time and time again. Hence, creating web-based material that really stands you apart from competitors in your field - tends to get recognised more often by search engine algorithms, particularly Google. 

Brainy stuff, huh?

Cuil, pronounced ’cool’, was launched yesterday as a new challenger to Google.  The credentials were good, big money backing and a number of ex-Google staffers on the team.  Despite, or perhaps because of the barrage of publicity, the launch has been widely regarded as a flop.  Why? Because the volume of coverage generated such a volume of traffic that the site couldn’t cope.  It ran slowly and some of the search results were surprising.   

I tried an acid test.  I searched for ‘Cuil’ in Google.  A news story on the launch appeared at number 1 and the site itself was at number two.  I then searched for ‘Cuil’ in Cuil; no such luck.  Towns and villages in Sligo, French cuisine, Lochaber, scenic sights in Scotland and even some Gaelic results but no search engine came up and it was definitely lacking in ‘Cuil’.   

Have a look at another search engine called Scour.  It launched very recently with far less of a fanfare but it’s interesting because it aggregates searches from other engines; Google, Yahoo and MSN.  It is also the first social media search engine because it allows users to rate searches which should improve its functionality over time.  Now search for  ’Scour’ in Cuil and it comes in at number one!  What’s more is Scour actually pays registered users for every search they carry out.  Now my money’s on that.