A search engine that claims to index three times as many pages as Google has launched today.

Cuil was set up by a former search engine specialist at IBM and his wife, an ex-Google staffer.

The startup claims that it can search 120 billion web pages, and says it ranks by content not popularity. It says it offers privacy, categorisation and other search suggestions not available on other search engines.

“The web continues to grow at a fantastic rate and other search engines are unable to keep up with it,” said Tom Costello, chief executive and co-founder of Cuil. “Our significant breakthroughs in search technology have enabled us to index much more of the internet, placing nearly the entire web at the fingertips of every user. In addition, Cuil presents searchers with content-based results, not just popular ones, providing different and more insightful answers that illustrate the vastness and the variety of the web.”