Bill Slawski spotted the transfer of ownership of these patent applications this morning. The patents transfer to Google from Cuil include 20090240672, 20090240685, 20090241044, 20090241018, 20090241058, 20090241065 and 20090241066.

This is not all that surprising, being that one of the co-founders, Anna Patterson joined Google the same month Cuil went offline.

Related Stories:

• Cuil Goes Offline, Future Not So Cool
• Anna Patterson, Cuil Founder, Returns To Google
• Cuil Launches — Can This Search Start-Up Really Best Google?
• Cuil Announces New Layout, Other Updates
• Cuil Launches Timeline To Search Results
• Cuil Jumps On The Real-Time Search Bandwagon
• Cuil Fast Test – Relevancy Isn’t A Google Killer
• Cuil Maplines: A Good Idea That Needs Work
• Google To Gain Access To Over 1.5 Million European Patent Documents

Anna left Google to launch a ‘Googler killer’ named Cuil. Cuil, a new search engine, had a ton of hype around it and had a lot of smart people working there, including Anna. A few months ago Cuil went offline after not being able to raise more funding and has remained offline since.

Anna appears to now be a Director of Google Research at Google. Prior, she worked at Google since 2004 as the architect of Google’s large search index, TeraGoogle, that launched in early 2006 and technical lead of one of the two Web ranking groups at Google, in charge of GoogleBase, and managed for the core piece of Google’s ad-matching technology.

Anna’s husband actually coined the name for Cuil. According to Wikipedia:

The Irish ancestry of Anna Patterson’s husband Tom Costello sparked the name Cuil, which the company states is taken from a series of Celtic folklore stories involving a character, Fionn mac Cumhaill, they erroneously refer to as Finn MacCuil. The company says that Cuil is Irish for knowledge and hazel.

TechCrunch reports Cuil went down after last minute acquisition talks failed. They said “Cuil was in the final stages of an acquisition as of last Wednesday, and everything was in place except the final signatures. Then the deal fell apart for some reason.” The day after, Thursday, employees were reportedly told to pack up and then later on in that day the servers went offline.

It is believed the service may go back up online again so they can lure a potential buyer of their algorithms, index and technology. But is is unclear as to how cool Cuil’s future will be.

Cuil officially launched in July 2008. In Danny’s article, he wrote “Can any start-up search engine “be the next Google?” Many have wondered this, and today’s launch of Cuil (pronounced “cool”) may provide the best test case since Google itself overtook more established search engines.” For our past articles on Cuil, see our Cuil archives.

As sites and pages multiplied exponentially Google became an increasingly necessary tool. We’re all familiar with the story. Now Google controls a majority of search traffic in most countries around the world. It has become a seemingly unstoppable force.

The influence of search (paid and organic) has been so powerful that billions of dollars have changed hands and established media companies have been all-but-toppled by their failures to recognize and exploit search effectively. Newspapers in particular fall into the latter category.

But the lessons of search and SEO have been well-learned by some media companies, many entrepreneurs and investors. In response, a range of so-called “content farms” has arisen to drive page views off “content” created by hundreds of mostly low-paid bloggers (and some former journalists).

Demand Media, Associated Content (now part of Yahoo), Examiner.com, Suite 101 and others recruit and train freelancers to quickly generate articles on all manner of niche topics that will drive qualified page views or lead generation in some cases. Yahoo just made a $100 million bet on this version of SEO. And AOL is pursuing a somewhat more refined version of this same strategy with Seed.

The original model arguably is “The Mining Company,” which in 1999 became About.com and was later acquired by the NY Times for its SEO/link value. While About.com was originally about “content curation” (organizing and commenting on links), the content farms are about content creation.

Despite the protests of the companies themselves about the terms “content farm” and “content mill,” the truth is that the articles and columns produced by these operations are of variable quality at best. And in some cases the content they generate should be considered a form of spam.

The proliferation of dubious or low-quality content from some of these sites is, over time, a direct threat to Google in my view. Google doesn’t present any publisher “branding” in search results so users must often click back and forth to find a quality source for the information they’re seeking. Google’s algorithm is supposed to address issues of quality and authority — and it often does — but the rising tide of mediocre, SEO-driven content creation is a fundamental problem for searchers.

Enter Blekko.

Over the past several years there have been many runs at Google and general search, including Powerset (acquired by Microsoft) and the ill-fated Cuil. None of these independent challengers has succeeded to date. (The jury’s still out on Bing of course, but arguably it has already succeeded by several measures.)

For those who haven’t heard of it, Blekko is a general search engine that will launch relatively soon. It has been written about several times by TechCrunch and I wrote about it briefly a year ago after an initial demo from founder Rich Skrenta and Mike Markson. Danny intends to do a “deep dive” on Blekko shortly so I’ll let him discuss features in depth.

There are two general characteristics that differentiate Blekko: transparency and user control. It’s also social in interesting ways; registered users can “follow” one another.

Blekko’s motto is “Slash the Web.” The centerpiece of that slogan and its chief innovation is the concept of “slashtags.”

Slashtags allow search personalization and filtering through the creation of mini-indexes of authoritative or favorite sites. For example, Skrenta has created a slashtag for wine blogs that he likes: “/skrenta/wineblogs.” In short this allows him or me to search an authoritative or personal sub-index of the internet for wine-related content and recommendations.

This way I can get articles and commentary from sites I trust or that people I trust recognize as authoritative — and cut out the, pardon the expression, crap content.

While there’s a short learning curve slashtags are easy to use and their value is almost self-evident. Blekko can also be used just like Google without slashtags as well.

Slashtags address the content-spam problem I described and provide control over results not offered by Google today. My prediction is that sophisticated search users will immediately be drawn to Blekko for the personalization, SEO tools (I’ll let Danny discuss) and social features it offers. I also predict that after it formally launches we may see some slashtag-like development from Google.

In 1998 the web was ripe for Google. But Google’s profound success and the way it has shaped the internet, giving birth to content farms, may have paved the way in 2010 for Blekko.

NOTE: Please see our detailed review that’s now available, Blekko: New Search Engine Lets You “Spin” The Web.

As Mashable points out, Cuil seems to be following OneRiot’s lead in that its real-time results are more about the links people are sharing online rather than the actual tweets and conversations.

The interface is nice with the ability to scroll horizontally through several results, but there’s no indication where the results are coming from (is this just a Twitter crawl/API pull?) and nothing to explain what the “Hotness” bar is and how it relates to other real-time terms.

What’s a Mapline. Here’s Cuil’s explanation: “Just as our Timelines show a concept across time, our Maplines show a concept across a map.”

It’s an interesting idea, but seems to be poorly executed. The Mapline on a search for John Legend, for example, shows a random assortment of places that the singer has performed in the past — certainly not a complete list. The Mapline on a search for Seattle Mariners includes the locations where many current and former players were born.

What would be more useful on queries like these would be to show a map of John Legend’s upcoming tour dates, or a map of upcoming Seattle Mariners games. It’s an interesting idea, though, but one that needs more refinement.

Let me show you how it works on the Great Depression search. At the top right, you see a timeline box, mousing over one of the lines, will open up some more detail:

You can also enlarge the box:

This feature can come in handy for many types of queries.

When Cuil launched last summer, the site’s design was one of its primary distinguishing features — it used a three-column layout that gave equal weight to a variety of results. After the new changes, there are still three columns, but the primary results take up two columns at the top of the page:

It’s still a unique design where search engines are concerned, but to be frank, it looks almost like a news/magazine-style blog now. And as you can see from the search above for “buy books” that doesn’t include Amazon.com in the results, it still has some relevancy issues.

Cuil says new content from MapQuest and Hulu is now included in the search results, and they’ve made some behind-the-scenes tweaks to improve speed.

Here’s Danny Sullivan’s Wikipedia article, but showing a picture of Danny Sullivan the race car driver:

This is my, Barry Schwartz’s, search blog, but this is a picture of the psychologist:

A search for Greg Sterling (yes, an editor here), shows a picture of Chris Sherman (an editor here):

Vanessa Fox, the avatar?

Okay, now for some funny ones.

Rand Fishkin looking like Google’s Matt Cutts:

Tamar Weinberg looking a lot like Danny Sullivan in a girl’s tank top:

David Naylor… No comment:

Andrew Goodman escaped from prison?

Tim Mayer of Yahoo now a referee?

Our friend, Gary Price, looking extremely gray:

miserable failure: Cuil has suggested it wouldn’t be vulnerable to the Googlebomb that made President George W. Bush rank at the top of Google for years for this phrase. Not so. Bush shows up at number two (reading right to left).

cars: Cuil said they’d feature a variety of subjects for a query. So for [cars], I’m wanting to see pages for both automobiles and the movie "Cars," as I get with Google. This doesn’t happen. Indeed, the movie doesn’t even appear as a related category to explore.

jaguar: Another good query for testing if a variety of subjects come up, as jaguar can refer to the game console, the car or the animal (among other things). Cuil gives me all three, while Google misses the gaming system. But Cuil puts me off with this description for the "Save The Jaguars" page:

[about jaguars] [conservation] [adopt a jaguar] [news] [resources] [donate]

That’s easily fixed, but descriptions are important for generated relevancy among searchers. I’m also not certain why schrodinger.com comes up in the top results.

viagra: Seeing URLs for utahpheasantsociety.org (which redirects to a Viagra selling site) or a page called "EuroDNS & Domain Name Parking Page" for Cuil’s results are off-putting, but they do have the official site as well as the FDA. Of course, Google has both, and with the FDA it points right at the FDA’s page on Viagra.

patents: Getting patents.cos.com first, then being told that patent search is no longer available there and to visit the US Patent Office, is disappointing. Getting the US Patent office listed fifth is also disappointing. Getting the Wikipedia Page on the Google Patents service, rather than patents in general, yet another disappointment. Google lists the US Patent office first and the general Wikipedia page on patents third.

new york: Well, getting only three results tells me something’s just not right with Cuil at launch!

danny sullivan: Ego search time! Ego searches are a terrible way for anyone but an individual to usually measure relevancy, but they’re often done and search engines are assessed individually on them. For me, it’s all me! The race car driver isn’t to be found! He gets one listing on Google.) Cuil lists the old place I used to write at (Search Engine Watch) first, rather than Search Engine Land (as Google does — the old place comes up third). My personal blog at daggle.com isn’t listed — Google has it. Both have my Wikipedia page. Google has my Twitter page and my main page from my consulting web site.

annie williams watercolour: One of my favorite artists; in the past I’ve found virtually little about her on the web. This search gives me 14 results from Cuil, though only 7 are listed. Her Wikipedia page doesn’t come up, probably because it spells "water colour" as two words. Google, supposedly less comprehensive, gives me 777,000 matches! OK, skip the numbers — something’s probably not right with Cuil’s counting. Still, Google gets me her Wikipedia page plus a BBC Radio 4 interview — something Cuil doesn’t have at all.

17 palms oasis: A cool place in California’s Anza Borrego dessert where people leave notes to each other in a diary box under one of the palms. Cuil’s first page of results all look very on-target and relevant. Google’s are also good, though the last about Kauai isn’t on the main subject I had in mind.

Let me end with a caveat again. To measure relevancy, you want to run a battery of tests on a variety of different subjects. Lots and lots of them, and have a number of people share their own subjective experiences. My article from 2002, "In Search Of The Relevancy Figure," goes into depth about this. Despite my call then and my 2005 article, "Screw Size! I Dare Google & Yahoo To Report On Relevancy," we still lack this type of metric or testing body. As a result, a different set results could show Cuil (or another search engine) as more relevant than Google – or not. But the lack of such testing means that no one (not even Google) can authoritatively claim that title.