Cuil Versus Google

The ultimate David and Goliath scenario began to unfold on the battlefield yesterday as Cuil began offering it’s search engine to the public. What makes this battle more interesting then some of the others we’ve heard about is the fact that Cuil (pronounced “cool”) was started by several former Google engineers and Google has tried unsuccessfully to buy them out. Must be something to this Cuil then, right?

The short video below covers some of the buzz that’s making it’s rounds across the net and in Silicon Valley and is worth the few minutes to watch.

Our initial impression is not very favorable as the search results included a lot of “clutter” and instances where the same site consumed high percentages of search results. Having said that, we understand that a lot can change over time and they’ve only been turned on for one day!

Choosing The Best Online Store Software

If you’ve been online for some time you’ve no doubt heard of the free osCommerce (the leading Open Source online shop e-commerce solution that is powered by a dedicated, strong, and ever growing community) and like other popular open source solutions they have a thriving community of developers/businesses that take the open source software and build superior solutions from it and try to profit from that effort.

One such solution is CRE Loaded. CRE Loaded offers an open source version tht you can use to build small stores and then when you need a more robust solution they steer you into their “Pro” version. That’s the version I chose to use for my first online store, Big City Pet, an online pet store. I chose this solution after soliciting feedback from some online retail pros and the fact that you pay them one time for the solution and never any monthly fees or transaction fees like some of the other options available out there.

After getting started on building out my first online store it became apparent that I was going to need their Store Manager for CRE Loaded to speed up and simplify the process of starting and later maintaining Big City Pet.

Store Manager for CRELoaded is a Windows application that allows you to manage your CRE Loaded-based online store much more efficiently. You can add, delete and update products, categories and manufacturers, automatically upload your product images while editing products, categories, manufacturers, view reports, orders and keep the track of your online sales. All this from your computer. CRE Loaded Manager was made for ordinary entrepreneurs not geeks, and after only a few settings required for the program to start and it just works.

I’ll report back when my store is live, but so far it seems to be working great! They offer a free 30-day trial period if you want to check it out yourself. Free Store Manager trial

Google Keyword Tool Now Offers Search Volume

Google AdWords announced they’ve added keyword search volume data to their Keyword Tool.

Now, when you use the Google Keyword Tool to search for your relevant keywords, you’ll be able to see the approximate number of search queries performed on Google and their search network for these keywords. This gives advertisers a better idea of where they’ll get more mileage for their money and will help in budgeting.