Google Search Wiki, thoughts?

[deadman]

Hi everybody

Google has recently announced Searchwiki (I talk about it on my blog here), a digg like service whereby you can manipulate your own search results easily and effectively, moving spammy results down and moving quality resources up, as well as share thoughts on websites. What do you think of it? Have you seen it? Do you think it'll be good for blogging or bad for it?

Personally speaking, I think it could be good. If you have a quality blog, people can comment on your blog from within google saying "this is a great blog", even though your actual serps are (according to google) not going to be affected.

What do you think?

[Bloggeries]

I don't know much about it so I won't give a lengthly comment. I do think it has pros but also cons. Cliques can do what they will to lower or flag competitors as spam or use that clique to build up each other.

I dunno we'll have to see!

[sadiessay-so]

I agree with Rob - could be good, but cliques can always do their thing to lower competitors or raise their own. Only time will tell.

[Nathan]

The thing is that you can relegate search results to the bottom but only on your own search results. Your markups don't effect other people's results, or at least, that's the official word from Google.

I think that Google Search Wiki is the start of a new age in which blogs and websites must begin delivering on their promises to users. If they have low quality blogs or misleading titles they are liable to be banned to the bottom by irritated search engine users. On the other hand, if they offer consistently good results users will move them to the top.

Blogs are going to have to get a lot better, a lot faster to please search engine visitors.

[peteranswers]

I hate it - another thing that people are going to game and there is going to be a lot of comments that shouldn't be seen by kids that will now be visible. Can't believe people can make public comments on any website, just not right.

[Nathan]

Actually, your comments only show up when you are logged in to your Google account. They don't show up to any other users, just to you. Its sort of like a reference system to keep track of your own favorite sites.

Also when you move something to the top of the search results, its only moved up on your search results, not on anyone elses. (This according to the Google blog.)

Therefore I feel that Google Search Wiki will enable better personal search experiences without interfering with other people's search results. Basically Google is providing a way to customize the search results to your own preferences.

[peteranswers]

Originally Posted by NathanKP

Actually, your comments only show up when you are logged in to your Google account. They don't show up to any other users, just to you. Its sort of like a reference system to keep track of your own favorite sites.

That's simply not true. Do a search for Microsoft, then click the "See All notes for this SearchWiki" link at the bottom of the page. You'll see all sorts of very public comments which currently include things like "Hi, I'm a Mac!", "Hello from Ubuntu user " and "Microsoft sucks"

You can also see how many people have voted a site up and voted a site down. While they do say they are not currently taking that into ranking considerations I think it is very likely that they will.

[Nathan]

Originally Posted by peteranswers

That's simply not true. Do a search for Microsoft, then click the "See All notes for this SearchWiki" link at the bottom of the page. You'll see all sorts of very public comments which currently include things like "Hi, I'm a Mac!", "Hello from Ubuntu user " and "Microsoft sucks"

You can also see how many people have voted a site up and voted a site down. While they do say they are not currently taking that into ranking considerations I think it is very likely that they will.

Okay, I was wrong.

But, what I mean is that you don't have to see the other user's comments. They don't show up by themselves unless you click to view them.

Also, Google does say that they don't use the vote up/down to adjust PR, but I agree that there is not telling if they may start incorporating it. Who knows what kind of long term effects this may have on searching...

[sadiessay-so]

Okay, I'm going to ask a really dumb, very blonde question. Just warning you...

Does the "search-wiki" thing appear on it's own now on all regular Google pages when you go to search? How do you see the comments, or make one? I went to search something the other day (I can't remember what it was now...) - it was earlier this week - and the arrow and x button didn't show up like they normally do now for most things. What's up with that? I'm just kind of confused about the whole thing.

[Nathan]

The arrow and x only show up when you are logged in to your google account. Otherwise search can't keep track of who you are. When you log in then it turns Search Wiki on.