There's a lot of hype surrounding Cuil (pronounced "cool"), the latest in a long line of Google killers. But while search junkies have been quick to praise the startup, Cuil hasn't exactly sent officials at Google -- or users -- into a frenzy.

Cuil, which exited beta today, is the product of husband and wife team Anna Patterson and Tom Costello, as well as several fellow Google alums.

According to Costello, Cuil has the largest index of web pages at 120 billion. Google, which declined to say how many pages it has indexed, told The New York Times that it has "the largest collection of documents searchable on the web," adding that it welcomes the competition.

News of Cuil's debut received widespread attention, and TechCrunch even reported that the surge in traffic to the site caused a brief crash.

But while interest is high, the results are a little disappointing.

Cuil uses data mining to sort content by category, which is supposed to make searching more efficient. The results include bigger blocks of text and more images as well as tools to help users refine their searches.

But a few random searches didn't exactly inspire Danny Sullivan's own review of the startup for his publication.

"I still didn't come away with a sense that Cuil has Google-beating relevancy," Sullivan wrote. "Instead, it has some flaws though is better than many start-up search engines appear out of the box."

Following up on Sullivan's queries, iMedia Connection Assistant Editor Rich Cherecwich tried his own name, which did not appear despite returning numerous relevant results on Google. But Cherecwich also noticed a disconcerting bug. Queries often failed to return results on the first try, but on the second and third attempts, results were generated.

My random collection of searches also returned some odd results. A search for "Yankees" returned a barrage of results for the New York baseball club. Those results were further enhanced by a category box on the right side of the page that offered terms relevant to players on the team's roster and things like All-Star appearances. But a search for "Dodgers" returned no results at all, even after multiple attempts. That's puzzling, to say the least, because it's clear that Cuil has a content category for sports as well as a sub-category for baseball. Yet, it's missing a team.

When I searched for my own name, I didn't suffer the same fate as Cherecwich. But the results weren't all that great, either. Where Google returns my iMedia Connection bio page in the top slot (arguably a highly relevant result for those interested in me), Cuil delivered a slew of articles -- some for iMedia, some for other publications -- all of them terribly old.

A final search for the term "monkey" produced the most confounding results of all. While most of the information on the page related to the animal (no problem there), the "Explore by Category" box led quickly to a virtual dead end. Opening the category primates, I selected "Haplorrhini" (their choice, not mine). That click led to this stock message: "We didn't find any results for 'monkey Haplorrhini.'"

I tried the link several times and each attempt produced the same result.

While these searches are more anecdotal than anything else, it's hard to say that the early user experience is all that great, and that could be a problem for Cuil even by Costello's own admission.

"I think it will be better," Costello told The Times. "But there is no question that the public has to decide."    

If you've tried Cuil and you'd like to share your thought on the search engine with the iMedia Connection community, please leave a comment below.