Cuil's performance is certainly not hot

Back in July we reported on a new contender to Google’s crown Cuil. Well it certainly attracted hype on its launch date, but has since then attracted mainly criticism. Six month’s since its launch traffic to the site is looking poor. This performance must be especially hard for the investors, with a reported $33 million invested in the business.

This Alexa chart from the Tech.Blorge blog, illustrates the huge traffic the site received on its initial launch and how quickly the traffic tailed off leaving very poor traffic levels in the following months.

The poor performance of the search engine is surprising considering the team and investment behind it, but they weren’t really bringing anything new to the table and what innovations they were attempting were poorly thought out and didn’t drive much benefit. Targeting a specific niche could have been a more profitable route into the market, rather than going head to head with Google.