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Yesterday’s launch of the so-called “search engine rival to Google,” Cuil, went a bit less smoothly than I imagine the creators (ex-Google employees) planned. Well, less smooth in some ways and phenomenal in others.

Let’s start with the phenomenal:

• Clever name — despite the foreign spelling ( the Gaelic word for knowledge) it’s still easily spelled and remembered
• Positioned very specifically as the possible big competitor to Google
• Massive viral media coverage — I imagine it started in the blogosphere and perhaps a few targeted media interviews but then it spread like wildfire with reports even appearing on national television (oh Fox News loves a sensation!). Everywhere you looked on the Web, people were sharing the link to the service and blogging about their Cuil experience. Most companies would beg, borrow and steal for exposure on that level. Oddly, very few of the media sites actually tested the engine before telling the world.

Now the not so phenomenal:

• The failure to bring back results. Searching on crystallyn (Crystal King didn’t give me anything worthwhile), like Chris Brogan, only served me up a handful of social communities where I use that login (mostly ones I don’t even use anymore). I’ve been blogging since 1998 and have had a website since 1995. Beyond that, I have really been all over the Web in a million different ways so this was shocking to me. Even more disappointing was the weird unrelated pictures that would pop up next to those few sites it found. Did Cuil do any beta testing?
• Not being ready for the overwhelming interest of people who want to see what sort of application could possibly topple the Google god. On it’s first day, Cuil crashes due to server overload. Hard to be a Google rival if you can’t manage the masses.
• Related to that first not-so-phenomenal bullet, Flickr user AntoineGrant2007 captured a screenshot where he tried to search for Digg but had no results. This appears to have been fixed…do a search for Digg now on Cuil and you’ll find it richly populated. Now if they would only do that for Crystal King and Crystallyn!
• Not being timely. Even now as I’m searching for information to write this post, I decide to try Cuil to see what information comes back when I type in “Cuil crashes.” Nada. If you type that in Google, you’ll have hundreds of hits right away, linking to other disgruntled searchers.

Now, the not so phenomenal may not be as big of a deal IF Cuil had not actually “launched” the product with a media push behind it. I caution executives all the time about announcing news before the product is ready — and I mean READY. Ready enough to handle what the world will do to lift up or decimate your brand when you push it out to the masses.Test it. Test it again. Do user studies. Be ready for in-depth reviews of your product. Prepare against failure and be ready for success.

The Results:

• Yes, there was an incredible media surge but the effect turned out to be negative rather than positive.
• Word-of-mouth + Technology spread the negative search experiences to the rest of the world, resulting in hundreds of articles, photos, videos and blog posts on how Cuil failed to return accurate searches, how it crashed, etc.
• Cuil lost control of their brand. Flickr user Jambina demonstrates this with a single picture, picture to the right...the changing of "cuil" to "uncuil."

For all it’s “knowledge” Cuil failed to learn some ot the most basic elements of what one SHOULD do when launching a product, especially a product that is intended to directly take on one of the biggest brands in the marketplace. It’s going to take a lot for this fledgling company to prove themselves to the world again. Then again, perhaps this “failure” will be a success for the owners in that some company will snap them up before they get the chance to actually improve and do what they “said” the search engine could do. Ahh time — and the massive network of people that fuel the Internet — will only tell.