» Google SearchWiki: What are the implications?

Google SearchWiki: What are the implications?

Google SearchWiki launched this week. It is Google’s way of making search a more interactive experience. We tell you how it works, how we like it and what the wider implications are for searching and search engine marketing.

How it works

Now you can customize search by re-ranking, deleting, adding, and commenting on search results.

When logged in to your Google account, little icons appear next to every item in the search results: Clicking the arrow icon lets you move the results you like to the top of the search results (called promoting).

If you find results you consider irrelevant, clicking the x icon removes it from the search results altogether. And if there is a site you like that doesn’t show up, a link at the bottom of the page lets you add it.

The next time you do the same search, Google remembers your previous choices and the site you promoted will be right at the top of your personal search results. The arrow icon is now green, reminding you that you have promoted this site.

Your changes are stored in your Google Account and they are visible only to you. So the actions you take in promoting or removing sites from your search results using Google SearchWiki do not influence the way Google rank sites for other users — at least not for now. More on this below.

You can also add notes on a particular site, by clicking the text bubble icon. These comments are public and are intended as a way for you to share your insights with other searchers.

By clicking the link “See all notes for this SearchWiki” at at the bottom of the search result page you get a new version of the search result list, with the top comment for the various listings included.

In addition, you also see a summary of the actions others users have made in interacting with the search results: Below each item you see the number of people who have promoted or removed the site along with the number of comments. Click on the comments link and all the comments are there for you to read.

You can promote a comment by clicking the thumbs-up icon or demote it by clicking thumbs-down.

What are the implications for search rankings?

Google emphasizes that changes made in the SearchWiki interface will have no impact on the traditional ranking of web pages.

Still, Google will clearly learn a ton about search behavior through this new set of features, so even if the SearchWiki will not influence the rankings of particular sites in general, it might influence the Google ranking algorithm in the long run.

Google may, for instance, use the data to determine the association between the content of web pages and ambiguous search queries (for instance to find out whether a search result for the query “jaguar” is about big cats or cars).

All you black hat search engine marketers out there: There is no use in hiring 1000 college students to vote on the sites of your customers. Nor will that ever be an option, as the folks at Google know you far too well to open that can of worms.

Still, the SearchWiki does open up one potential avenue for search engine marketers, namely the manipulation of the SearchWiki comment list.

The SearchWiki comments

The Google search query for “google searchwiki” has, of course, generated its own wiki, as shown here:

SearchWiki screenshot

The SearchWiki reflects the heated debate this new service has generated.

The first comment on this SearchWiki result result list is undeniable negative:

“I hate Google SearchWiki. I’ve never hate (sic!) a google product before. But today I’ve found the first product I totally and truly hate! I hate it so much I have to use it to vent against google for not giving an option to opt out. Also I have turned off my web search history intentionally but SearchWiki ignores that. It should respect the setting and not store what I do. This is the worst product Google has ever produced!”

This person has added a similar comment to YouTube video, which is listed as number three in the SearchWiki result list.

It should be possible to manipulate the SearchWikis by having different persons praising your sites and the sites of your clients and then vote down the sites of your competitors.

The ranking of search wiki comments are based on the number of votes. So, if you get a sufficient number of people to vote up a particular comment, you should be able to get the comment of your choice to the front page of the SearchWiki comment page (but not the regular search engine result page).

Google will obviously track IP numbers and the like and try to filter out the input of individuals that vote on too many web pages at the same time. It is also possible to identify voting campaigns by other means. Still, small scale attempts may succeed.

The question is, of course, whether it is worth it.

Only a portion of the Google searchers log into a Google account before searching. The rest will not be able to see the SearchWiki tools.

And again: Only a (small?) portion of the Google account holders will actually read the SearchWiki page. Given that the link is at the bottom of the search result page, we guess that they will be very few indeed.

There is one trend that might change this. If a sufficient number of users provide useful comments– i.e. substantial comments that actually help searchers determine whether the web page is relevant and of sufficient quality — then people may start reading them.

The model here will be Amazon.com’s reader’s product reviews. They have proven themselves useful and have definitely contributed to the success of Amazon.

However, if the SearchWikis become popular, the spammers will obviously do their best to ruin a good tool.

At the moment many comments are too short and insubstantial to provide useful information.

The SearchWiki page for the relevant Google Blog article lists a long number of comments like these ones:

“Good article”
“test”
“good one”
“stupid idea”
“How cool is that?!”
“I give this 24 hours before this gets abused.”

and so on and so forth. Not much of a help, really.

Still, media and PR surveillance firms may find a new possible product line here: SearchWiki surveillance: “We tell you what searchers think about your brand and your site!”

Will we use it?

Here at Pandia we make active use of bookmarking tools and web feed readers to find sites we revisit often. For us it will not make much sense to use the Google search results as a kind of bookmarking tool, which is the most probable use of Google SearchWiki.

There are those that do use Google search for retracing their favourite sites, however. When looking for their favorite news site, they enter “current news” instead of going directly to CNN, BBC or the like. Some of them even search for “www.pandia.com” instead of putting the web address in the URL field.

For people who use Google this way it would make sense to click the arrow up icon to push a particular web page to the top of results.

Given that personal search habits are pretty consistent, they will probably get access to the same SearchWiki every time they are looking for a particular topic. They will for instance, use the search query “oslo budget hotels” every time they are looking for a cheap hotel in Oslo.

If they use other variations — like “cheap hotels oslo norway” — they will get a totally different SearchWiki and their old comments will not be found.

That being said, users may get access to all the comments they have made by clicking on “See all my SearchWiki notes” at the bottom of Google search results pages. This page may function as a kind of bookmark list or high quality search history, although we fail to see how this is a better tool than a dedicated bookmarking service.

If searchers are to use the SearchWikis for improving their “web search memory”, Google needs to add SearchWiki buttons to the Google Toolbar or a similar tool. Now searchers will have to go back to the search result list to vote for their favorite site. The problem is that if the web page truly is relevant, they will probably forget to do so.

We have our doubts

Our regular readers cannot have failed to notice our admiration for the innovative capabilities of Google.

This time, however, we are not convinced that they have a winner. For a company that thrives on simplicity and uncluttered interfaces, adding obscure buttons like these ones are risky, especially when it is doubtful if it service actually will be useful for a majority of searchers.

Maybe we will be proven wrong. In the meantime we would like to see Google adding a “disable SearchWiki” feature in our Google options. In the mean time, Austrian developer Franz Enzenhofer has developed a Greasemonkey script that lets you turn Google SearchWiki off (and on).

Google Video on SearchWiki: