Cuil thinks I am a Scientologist

Yesterday, a new search engine Cuil launched with a lot of mixed results. Most reviews of the site say it is no Google and I tend to agree thus far. This article does a decent job of explaining the pros and cons of the new site as well as the potential market for this new type of search engine. While the magazine style layout is different and seems to give more accurate look at the link you are about to click, as the article stated the results are not up to par. On every other major search engine I have a number one ranking. On Cuil, my Facebook profile is on the first page, but this site is buried five pages deep. When you do finally see a result for my site, the results are amusing and scary at the same time.

For many listings there is a little thumbnail image next to the entry. My listing can be seen at the right. The image says "My Success in Scientology." First, I want to say that I am not a Scientologist. If that is your bag that's cool, but I don't like that particular religion (and most others for that matter). Second, this is the first mention of Scientology I have ever put on my site. With that in mind, how is that picture relevant to my site's content? Finally, the link that Cuil indexed there is a dead link and has been for at least four months. In fact that link was only valid during the one week period that I took what was my beta site and moved it to the main directory. I updated my robots.txt file to keep that directory (that doesn't exist) from being indexed so hopefully that will get fixed.

I now worry that friends and family that I haven't spoken too for a while will look me up on Cuil and see the shocking revelation that I am in to Scientology. I can probably take a little solace in the fact that most likely 99% of the public hasn't heard of this site yet. According to the FAQ on how they pick what image to show next to results they "use advanced algorithms to determine the best image to show the user." That is interesting to me since that image is no where to be found on my hosting account. Considering there are about 10,000 images on my site I have a hard time believing that their algorithm is all that advanced. Let me know what kind of results you have seen for your own site. I'm sure others have as equally screwed-up listings as mine.