SAN FRANCISCO

GOOGLE is not ceding the point that its new rival, Cuil, could well be the world's biggest search engine.

On Cuil.com, the latter says it searches "more pages on the Web than anyone else - three times as many as Google and 10 times as many as Microsoft".

Google spokesman Katie Watson said her company still believes its index is the largest.

After getting inquiries about Cuil, Google asserted last Friday on its blog that it regularly scans 1 trillion unique Web links.

But Google said it does not index them all because they either point to similar content or would diminish the quality of its search results in some other way. The posting did not quantify the size of Google's index.

A search index's scope is vital as information, pictures and content cannot be found unless they are stored in a database. But Cuil believes it will outshine Google in other ways, including its method for identifying and displaying pertinent results.

Rather than trying to mimic Google's method of ranking the quantity and quality of links to websites, Cuil's co-founder Anna Patterson says Cuil's technology drills into the actual content of a page.

To add to this, Cuil's results will be presented in a more magazine-like format, instead of just a vertical stack of Web links.

Cuil's results are displayed with more photos spread horizontally across the page, and include sidebars that can be clicked on to learn more about topics related to the original search request.

Finally, Cuil is hoping to attract traffic by promising not to retain information about its users' search histories or surfing patterns - something that Google does, much to the consternation of privacy watchdogs.

Cuil is just the latest in a long line of Google challengers, which include swaggering startups like Teoma, Vivisimo, Snap, Mahalo and Powerset.

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Move over Google. You are cui