Google SearchWiki – Do We Really Want It ?

Web 2.0 has been really big and almost every website has done something or the other to involve their users but Google has probably played the trump card. If empowering users and enhanced interaction is one of the key things that users love in a website, what can be better than being able to alter your Google search results? Google Search Wiki has done just that!

Google Search Wiki is a feature that allows the users to alter the search rankings of websites, add new websites, delete websites and even add notes against each websites. Google remembers the changes made by the user and in case the user repeats the search he gets to see the already altered form of the search results with all the notes. In addition, true to the “Wiki” nature the user gets a taste of collective wisdom as they can see how other users have promoted or demoted search results in aggregate once they click on “See all notes for this Search Wiki”.

This feature is available to users only when they are logged into their Google account.

Now this sounds really good and rather cool but things start getting interesting when we consider the possibility of Google using this human input to improve its algorithm. Google already uses human judgment in its algorithm to some extent by virtue of its PageRank technique, where a website is judged by the number of other websites that links to it. Though Google has still remain non committal and has not said anything that allows us to conclude that they are going to use this feedback in their regular algorithm, Google being Google it is highly unlikely that they would let go such valuable information and not make good use of it to improve their search results. On the contrary there has been statements from Google execs that fuels the idea of Google using this data to improve their search results.

While human influence can definitely help Google improve their search results this also makes the algorithm more vulnerable to manipulation. We have seen the PageRank technology being manipulated by people through link networks, link buying, link swaps and various other ways through which websites gain back links inorganically. Once Google declares ( which I don’t think they will ever do) that they are going to use this data in their algorithm or people find out that the changes made to results through SearchWiki does have an impact on the natural organic results it is sure to be manipulated. For a few dollars there would be people ready to create a few thousand gmail accounts and then vote up your site or delete your competitor or something similar.

Besides the possibility of Google algorithm being affected, I think most of us love Google for the simplicity of its interface and now when most savvy netizens are in the verge of getting frustrated with those bunch of social bookmark buttons on every possible web page, I don’t think many of us would like to see our beloved Google interface cluttered with a bunch of voting buttons.

Google is not the first one to try customizing search results, we have seen similar efforts in U Rank – where Microsoft is testing search results tuned by user inputs, Mahalo is using it for the top search terms and WikiaSearch who has already been doing this. However, Google being much bigger than all of them in terms of market share the impact of user influenced search results in Google on the overall WWW can be quite interesting.