I think I finally get the point of cuil.com.

Cuil.com tries to generate search results that are contextually unique. This can really come in handy when you are searching for something that may not exist, and your goal, of course, is to find out if such a thing does exist.

For example, someone asked me if WebSphere Application Server 6.1 had a significant performance penalty from generating FFDC logs. When I searched Google for "WebSphere 6.1 ffdc log creation performance" I got 1130 results. Then I would have to look at the summary paragraph for each hit and ask myself, "Does this have anything to do with a performance problem from FFDC log generation?"

Of course, the problem is that I will get lots of results where folks are saying, "Here is my performance-related problem and the accompanying ffdc logs." That is why there are 1130 hits.

The same search on Cuil yields 7 hits.

After reading the Cuil results, I still don't know the answer for certain, but I could, with a bit more confidence, write back to the person asking me the question and say that a quick Internet search did not yield any results.

Whereas with Google's search results, I still wouldn't know, and I'd also have to slog through a lot more search results before I could write back with a grain of confidence.

UPDATE (2010-10-10): My timing of this post could not have been more ironic, I now realize.  Too bad.