The Wikiseek search engine gives you better Wikipedia search results, but it is doubtful if it functions equally well as a general purpose search engine.

Most active Wikipedia users agree that the regular Wikipedia on site search engine stinks. This is something the online volunteer based encyclopedia has in common with many web sites.

Wikiseek tries to solve this problem by establishing a new database consisting of all the content of Wikipedia as well as the sites the Wikipedia links to. The idea is that the Wikipedia will function as a kind of Web site quality control institution, leading to search results without spam and low quality content.

The idea is sound, but not all search engine experts are equally enthusiastic about it. Over at Search Engine Land Danny Sullivan argues that the results often are far worse than Google’s:

I could run more queries, but I’ve already seen enough to know Wikiseek’s not going to deliver on either the eliminate spam or the better relevancy promises. A few more spot check on things like cars, britney spears (notice the failure to list only one or two pages per domain) or travel just leave me cold.

Search Marketing Gurus agree that this “certainly won’t be a ‘Google Killer’”. However, “it will make searching on Wikipedia a lot easier”.

If the main focus of Wikiseek is to be to improve the search capabilities of the Wikipedia, the Wikiseek team may consider a few changes. They may, for instance, add more Wikipedia search results to the search engine result pages, or — at least — add a “more results from the Wikipedia” link below the Wikipedia section of the result listings.

If you are looking for an alternative to the Wikipedia’s regular search engine, you can also take a look at the metasearch engine Clusty’s Wikipedia search engine.

While Wikiseek adds a category cloud at the top of search results to help you focus your search, Clusty adds links to topic clusters of results in the left hand margin. However, this part of Clusty only searches the Wikipedia.

There is also Qwika.com, a search engine that indexes machine translated content, so that users may search for terms in their own language and see results translated from English.

Wikiseek is an initiative by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. The search engine is a work in progress and the Wikiseek team has established a special Feedback page where users can comment.

See also the following Pandia articles:
On the Search Wikia (which is something entirely different): The hype, some facts and what’s to come
On the Googlepedia, a Firefox plug in for the Wikipedia: 5 Firefox extensions that will change the way you search
On Qwika: Searching the Wikipedia

Webmaster World discussion.