The buzz the past few days has largely centered around the new search engine, Cuil.com, created by some former Googlers, including SMX West 2008 Keynote Speaker Louis Monier.

For those of you not geeky enough to know, Cuil is pronounced “cool” which could be a problem for the upstart search engine. I can already hear the uninformed trying to explain about this new search engine they found . . . pronounced “swill” or “sewill” or “kwill” and so forth. Not real good for easy branding.

And, judging from my initial attempts and searching with Cuil.com, Fonzie is cool, Cuil.com, well, not so much.

We all remember The Fonz in his black leather jacket and slicked back black hair, the epitome of cool in the 1950s based TV show Happy Days.

Cuil.com’s interface is also jet black, simplicity itself, though strangely not centered on the screen (at least not on mine). Type your query and off you go.

I’ve heard that the new search engine claims to have the largest index on the planet. I’m seeing old and even off-kilter content that needs to be removed or fixed. For instance, I ran a search for “FramesDirect” since I do SEO for FramesDirect.com to see what Cuil.com would come up with. They were gracious enough to make our home page first in their results, but one of the other results on the page pointed to and described the site’s lens option page using an image for a “Corvette Black Book” which obviously came from another site.

I then ran a search for “richard v burckhardt” and who the heck are these guys?

In another case, the Cuil results included a page on the FramesDirect.com site that was 301 redirected something like two years ago.

A search for “eyeglasses” resulted in Eyeglasses.com coming in first place. No offense to the competition, but that site has been down for several months with a single “Under Construction” page in place. I believe in the power of back links, and Eyeglasses.com will have some powerful keyword rich anchor text for “eyeglasses” in its back links by virtue of the domain name. But, a search engine that ranks a single page that is under construction and has been for months in the top spot needs some algo work.

That said, the search engine has a nice clean interface, with images and related search tabs at the top of the results. Better yet, Cuil.com doesn’t collect any information from you. If you are concerned about privacy, you’ll like this feature.

If Cuil.com wants to be The Fonz of search engines, it just needs some refinement, which I’m sure will come with time. After all, slicked back hair and black leather jackets got stale in the 1960s, kind of like some of Cuil’s current index.

Time for a Beatle haircut!

Over the past couple of years I’ve heard the mantra that the value of reciprocal linking is diminishing daily, to the point where it’s no longer worth the time and effort.

Even Google’s Matt Cutts has said, “As Google changes algorithms over time, excessive reciprocal links will probably carry less weight.”

In fact, one of my own quick search engine optimization tips is: The acid test for a potential link is if there is a natural, logical reason for that site to link to you. If not, then you don’t want the link.

If Google’s recent rankings are any evidence, then that mantra is dead wrong and Matt, it ain’t working!

Over the past few months I have noticed that fairly new sites with thousands of reciprocal links, frequently using keyword phrases for anchor text, have come out of nowhere to rank extremely well, sometimes dominating their space. Some are just using power reciprocal linking. Others are combining thousands of reciprocal links with another supposedly dead black hat technique, triangular linking, sometimes called a mini-net.

For this article, I’ll use an example of a site using purely reciprocal links to power it.

Here’s one site that didn’t show up in Google Trends until about March and is now ranking #2 for “sunglasses” in the Google serps.

The site itself is pleasant enough, but until recently, the only way to contact whoever is running it was using an e-mail form. No address or location information is given, nor is any information about who owns it, just that it is incorporated in Toronto. All I can tell from a domain check is that it was registered with GoDaddy.com and the I.P. is in Albany, New York. They don’t appear to want you to have much information about them. Only recently have they added a telephone number so that orders can be placed by phone.

Not what I would call a trusted, authority site.

What appears to be driving the rankings for this site is the sheer volume of backlinks to it, mostly from reciprocal linking. The site includes a link page that lists hundreds of their link buddies, almost none theme related. The links are from every variety, size and flavor of web site, blog and directory out there.

So much for the value of link theme.

Here’s what Yahoo! Site Explorer sees:

See that correctly? This site has 184,079 links to it! By comparison, I did the same backlink check for the Coca-Cola web site, a trusted site with a long history and authority. It only has 87,971 backlinks.

Clearly, reciprocal links are still working and well for many sites that otherwise would be left in the dust by longer established sites with more history and backlinks with theme focus.

I still don’t recommend this magnitude of reciprocal linking, though. Google is supposed to consider massive link trading to be spam, even though it currently appears to be ignoring it’s own statement:

At least for the moment.

I know this has nothing to do with SEO, but it does relate to technology and, well, I just feel the need to let folks know about this documentary, which I missed when it was originally shown in a limited number of theaters.

I recently watched the Who Killed the Electric Car? DVD and must say, it is an eye opener. I was in California when the state mandated that car manufacturers produce vehicles with zero emissions. While it was in place, I saw all kinds of electric cars here in the Palm Springs desert - the EV1, Honda and others. That was well over a decade ago.

Apparently, the auto companies, with help from the oil companies and politicians, convinced California to drop the mandate, and the electric cars were immediately pulled from consumers who loved them! The EV1 electric car that is followed in this documentary is one hot little car, but GM killed it, recalled all of them (they could only be leased) and destroyed them rather than sell to consumers who were begging to buy the vehicles.

So, we’ve had the technology for a quiet, practical around town electric car for years. The Japanese got the message and started producing hybrids, while the USA car companies came out with gas guzzlers like the Hummer.

Now, we are paying for big business greed and politics.

This should be required viewing for every American citizen. I highly encourage everyone to watch this. In addition to purchasing a DVD, Netflix has it. For more information on the movie, see the site.

I’m adding an S E O Resource Directory to The Web Optimist blog. It’s a moderated directory that, at least in the beginning, will be reciprocal link based. You can submit a resource for free, but the back links will be checked and sites that remove their link back to The Web Optimist will be removed from the directory.

And, yes, I am the moderator.

To start with, I’ll include the following general categories:

1. SEO Blogs: Blogs about search engine optimization, pay per click and related subjects.
2. SEO News Sites: Strictly SEO news and information. No blogs, please.
3. SEO Forums: Links to forums and discussion groups related to SEO and PPC topics.
4. Palm Springs Web Community: Links to web development and search marketing sites in the Palm Springs, CA desert area.

I’m open to suggestions for additional SEO and SEM related categories.

So, feel free to submit your link to the S E O Resource Directory.

Of course, if you want to be on the front page of The Web Optimist, you could always use the Tip Me link in the upper right side of almost every page on the blog.

In my post a few months ago, Social Media & S E O: I Want My MTV!, I lamented the loss of the original MTV format - 24 hours of non-stop music videos. If you’ve watched the channel lately, you’ll see music videos from time to time, but the format is mostly movies, music related documentaries and bad reality programming.

An interesting Internet-only TV channel has stepped in to fill the void. Available through TVU Networks, the strangely named BroccoliTV shows 80s videos non-stop (I’m watching The B-52s Love Shack video as I write this). It’s free. You can either watch through your browser (I could only get it to work with Internet Explorer, not Firefox) or you can download their viewing software.

TVU Networks offers a lot of other Internet video viewing, including a few cable channels like Sci-Fi Channel and Comedy Central. Most channels work great, but some could stand for better compression as they came through jerky, even on my 130 Mbps connection.

Cool! Hot in the City and White Wedding by Billy Idol!

I miss the VJs, though!