Google Introduces SearchWiki, But Does It Have a Downside?
How many times have you done a search on Google and seen the first page littered with unrelated results? How many times have you gone to page two or three to find the information you were looking for?
Now you can do something about it with SearchWiki. If you are signed into your Google account, the search results will have a promote button, remove button, and comment button. Search Wiki allows you to (1) move the good stuff to the top, (2) move the bad stuff to the bottom, (3) comment on individual search items and (4) read other people's comments by clicking a link at the bottom of the page.
Is social news the future of SearchWiki? And is that a good thing?
Overall, SearchWiki is pretty cool. It's definitely a slick way to put social features into search, and it is done well enough that it won't intrude on people who don't care about it. Heck, in the future we might see even better interactions with the social web like being able to move a result directly to your Delicious account.
But how will this effect future search results? Right now, Google uses incoming links to an article as evidence that people find the article relevant. Doesn't it make sense to use people promoting an article to the top of the search results as another vote of confidence?
And isn't that social news?
Here's the problem: Social news, while a pretty cool resource, suffers from power users that form cliques. These cliques can manipulate the system to ensure that their articles reach the front page and that rival articles are sunk into oblivion.
Do we really want this coming to search? Google already fights against similar attempts at manipulation. Link farms and comment spam is often done as a way to get incoming links to an article and to boost its importance.
Google search is big business. If they do implement page promotions and removals into their algorithm for determining search results, they will definitely have a fight on their hands against the droves of people hoping to manipulate the system.
On the flip side, it certainly is a window into better search results, so maybe it is a worthy fight to take on.
One more thing
I'm curious on what happens when you promote a page to the top and then weeks or months later another page pops up and rises to the top of Google for that search phrase. Will it come up on top of our custom results, or will the page we've promoted still come out on top?
I am able to get it where i am located (mid west usa) but im not sure if all users are able to see the google searchwiki yet. If not there is a video and some screen shots of the searchwiki at SearchWiki do you guys think this will fly? do you think it will effect the google search results drastically from now on?
If they incorporate this data from this feature into their organic search algorithm its will be manipulated by the same types of people that created link farms.
I don’t like this new thing one bit. Link farmers will find a way to use this to their advantage.
Neat tool for users that are signed in, but if it ultimately affects organic rankings, I can see the blackhat folks creating some script that tries to put their content on top.
Could be another google slap.
Andrew