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The founders claim that Cuil (pronounced cool) indexes 120 billion websites, which they suggest is three times as many as Google currently does, and ten times as many as Microsoft. However, this claim is hard to back up as Google does not reveal the size of its database.

Even with $33 million in funding, the site is still some way behind Google in terms of infrastructure and finances.

The site returns results in a page of excerpts in two or three columns, rather than a numbered list as Google does. Images are placed beside search results, often with interesting results - a smiling Ken Livingstone sits next to the Mayor of London's website, for instance.

In another results page, for "PC Pro", our logo was inexplicably switched with that of a computer retailer.

Despite this, the results seemed accurate,

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and an "explore by category" box on the results page offered useful contextual links.

One less tangible benefit that the founders claim is that Cuil collects and stores no personal information on users, which could make it popular amongst privacy advocates.

"Our significant breakthroughs in search technology have enabled us to index much more of the internet, placing nearly the entire web at the fingertips of every user. In addition, Cuil presents searchers with content-based results, not just popular ones, providing different and more insightful answers that illustrate the vastness and the variety of the web," says Tom Costello, CEO and co-founder of Cuil.

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