Wikipedia is a great source of information. Some of the articles are sub standard, some are slandering, even infuriating. But that’s the same all over the web. If you keep that in mind, Wikipedia contains a lot of interesting and useful information. But how to find it? Even if most Wikipedia articles are of good quality, Wikipedia’s search engine isn’t.

Wikipedia’s search engine will not correct your spelling or suggest more precise search terms. If there isn’t an article that is an exact match to your query, all you get is a list of articles containing the search term and in many cases, what you need isn’t on the list.

Now Wikipedia has teamed up with AskMeNow and launched AskWiki, a semantic search engine that seeks to provide specific answers to natural language questions using information from Wikipedia articles.

Searching the Wikipedia is no easier with AskWiki. Asking “what is page rank”, we got the answer “A page footer or simply footer in typography is that material which is separated from the main body of text and appears at the bottom of a printed page.” Searching for “what is web 2.0″ got this answer: “A spider web, spiderweb, spider’s web or cobweb (from the obsolete word “coppe” meaning “spider”) is a device built by a spider out of proteinaceous spider silk extruded from its spinnerets.”

To be fair, AskWiki is still in beta. The many clever and enthusiastic programmers in the Wikipedia community will hopefully contribute to improving it in the months to come. In the mean time, there are several third parties that can help you searching Wikipedia content.

Recent news from Pandia

Google has a plan for the social web
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The Quaero project - new European search technology
Embed a search cloud in your blog
Is the the time right for mobile web?

Here are some other headlines from this week’s search coverage

The Best Firefox Add-ons for Web Search
Wendy Boswell presents small tools that add functionality of some type to your Firefox browser. (About Nov 2 2007)

Rumors of Impending Facebook Music
Word is that Facebook is in discussions with major music labels about a new layer in the social networking service that would enable each band to have a profile on Facebook (Search Engine Land Nov 2 2007)

Google Revamps Gadget Directory!
Seen recently is the complete restoration of iGoogle Directory. The new design shows gadgets in one neat column. (Unofficial SEO Nov 2 2007)

Google & Opera Renew Ad Deal : But Still No gBrowser
Google will remain the default search provider for the Norwegian Opera browsers (Search Engine Journal Nov 2 2007)

Get Docs in 38 languages
Google's online office suite now localized for 99 percent of internet users (Google Docs Blog Oct 30 2007)

OpenSocial and Search Marketing
The list of OpenSocial sites provides access to more than 200 million people, which certainly provides critical mass. (Search Engine Watch Nov 2 2007)

OpenSocial Live Now
MySpace is now an official OpenSocial partner too, supporting the open Google application standard (Blogoscoped Nov 2 2007)

Google To Launch 'Android,' And Mobile Strategy
Reuters says that Google will unveil mobile strategy on Monday, Tom Krazit writes that Google will unveil 'Android' phone software. (Unofficial SEO Nov 3 2007)

Google Makes Blog Search Part Of Google Web History
Unofficial SEO Nov 4 2007.

New York Times Launches TechMeme Competitor
It isn’t exactly a truly one-to-one translation of the technology blogosphere monitoring tool (Mashable Nov 1 2007)

MySpace Joins Google’s OpenSocial
MySpace and Google announced that the largest social network in the world will be joining the developing initiative by the largest search engine in the world (MarketingPilgrim Nov 1, 2007)

AskWiki: Wikipedia Knows What You're Thinking
AskWiki is a new partnership between AskMeNow and the Wikimedia Foundation, which integrates some of the semantic web and natural language features of AskMeNow into Wikipedia searches (Wired, Nov 1 2007)

Weather Report: Yahoo! Search Update
Yahoo will update its index (Yahoo! Blog Oct 31 2007)

Google PageRank Victims Anonymous
Seen a drop in PageRank? These buttons may cheer you up. (Oct 29 2007)

With "Google" In Your URL, There Is No AdSense For You!
AdSense Disallowed On URLs Containing 'Google' (Unofficial SEO Oct 29 2007)

Hulu.com is Ready for (Failure) Launch
Hulu has announced new deals with Sony Pictures and MGM Studios (Marketing Pilgrim Oct 29 2007)

Google’s Response to Facebook: “Maka-Maka”
Google may have lost the bidding war to invest in Facebook, but it is preparing its own major assault on the social networking scene. (TechCrunch Oct 29 2007)

How to set up personalised Google news feeds
very useful feature of Google News is the ability to set up custom news feeds for your RSS reader. (Google Tutor Oct 28 2007)

Unofficial poll on Google Reader features
Matt Cutts hasing a list of all the little features that he might want in Google Reader. Vote! (Oct 29 2007)

Matt Cutts Confirms Paid Links & Google PageRank Update
The partial Google ‘Toolbar’ PageRank update is a result of Google’s campaign against paid linking (SE Journal Oct 29 2007)

Searching For The Best Engine
A global effort is underway to invent a better way of finding things on the Web. Could Google be vulnerable? (Newsweek predated Nov 5 2007)

Gmail's New Version Is Now Available
New features: mail prefetching, updated contact manager and other small updates. (Google OS Oct 29 2007)

Social Networking God: 350+ Social Networking Sites
( Mashable, Oct 23 2007)

Book Scanning: Lots of Resources
Book scanning involves many more projects than the ones that get a lot of the attention (Resource Shelf Oct 22 2007)

Using Social Media To Help Manage Online Reputation
In today's socially connected online world, reputation management is becoming more and more a concern for any business (Search Rank Oct 23 2007)