Internet Marketing News – Say Goodbye to Cuil

I remember when Cuil (pronounced “Cool”) came on the scene.

They did an amazing job of marketing that thing. Clients were asking about it. We were studying it. It really seemed like the next big thing.

Yeah… it’s closed.

For some reason it never caught on. Honestly, I can’t tell you why it didn’t catch on because I never really went there after that first week of excitement.

The question I ask myself is, “Why not?”

Why wouldn’t I occasionally type in the letters C-U-I-L?

We all seem to be developing an attachment to our favorite search engine. For most of us that’s Google. Although, we found this week that Bing is Now the #2 Search Engine.

So, slowly, things appear to be able to change.

But the fact that things don’t change much faster doesn’t actually make sense to me. All the user interfaces of search engines are pretty much the same. There’s no learning curve to using another search engine. And we really have no commitment to our favorite engine. It’s not like we have a history of searches built up that contributes to the search we are doing right now. Nor have most of us compared search results from one engine to the next to determine which results are better.

Still, we just go to the same engine over and over again.

So, Cuil is dead. Nice try guys. If it’s any consolation, you aren’t the only company to die on the search engine battle field. Your opponents, the searchers of the world, are a mysterious group of people. Who knows why they do what they do. But that’s the way it is.

Here’s the rest of the Internet marketing news:
Cuil is Stone Cold – Another ‘Google Killer’ Bites the Dust @SEWatch

“The employees were told at 11 AM today, and the servers shut down at 4 PM PDT.”

Former employees also told TechCrunch that this isn’t temporary and they weren’t paid this week.

Cuil, founded in 2005, launched in July 2008 to much hype, calling itself “the world’s biggest search engine.” But users didn’t seem to care.

Does Google Really Know If Your Links Are Paid?

John said:

Looking at your site and how it’s connected on the web, it might be that the links to your site are not counting the way they might have in the past. In general, it is important to us that links are not just exchanged, bought/sold or otherwise used in an attempt to manipulate rankings, as we have detailed in our help center article at http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66356

If you find that your site has issues with regards to our Webmaster Guidelines that can be resolved, I would recommend doing that and then submitting a reconsideration request, detailing the changes that you have made.

Supplement your AdSense earnings with Google Affiliate Network – Inside AdSense

Have you ever wondered if your users buy the products you recommend? Have you wished you could be rewarded for driving sales and conversions? You can. With Google Affiliate Network, publishers can access cost-per-action (CPA) or affiliate ads. This means that you can start working with advertisers who will pay you a performance fee for driving a sale or other conversion.

Bing Now #2 Search Engine, They Didn’t Even Have To Take Over Yahoo

Nielsen released a report showing that Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, has finally surpassed Yahoo. That makes Bing the number two search engine, behind Google. Yahoo has taken the three position. This does not apparently include the fact that Bing is powering most of Yahoo Search queries.

Facebook Adds Social Endorsement Stats

When you visit your Ads Manager on Facebook, you’ll now find a column labeled “Social %.” This tells you what percentage of your ads with social endorsements received clicks.

Picture from: Wordle – Beautiful Word Clouds

This post was written by

Sage Lewis – who has written 333 posts on SageRock Digital Marketing Blog.
My name is Sage Frederick Lewis. My kid's name is Indiana Sage Lewis. I am filled with love and passion for many things in life. The list of things I like about life is MUCH longer than the things I don't like about life. So, since you don't have all day reading about the mundane things I love (some of which, btw, include: Rocky, Indy, SageRock, movies, pizza, cheesecake, running, exploring.) here are the things I don't like: Driving Meetings Zucchini (I like it fine. I'm just allergic.) I think that's pretty much it. My Twitter account is: http://twitter.com/sagerock My YouTube Channel is: http://www.youtube.com/sagerock