So, then it has been released. Google SearchWiki. The new system that allows you to vote on the sites that get listed in the search results. Here are some features:
- You can vote any search result to the top of the search.
- You can delete any search result, and it will disaper from the search result.
- You can write comments in each search result.
- You can add a new site to the search results and it will be added to the top.
One thing though, the changes you make only affect your own searches. So, the search result for other users will stay the same. But, there is one way to see how the other users have used the SearchWiki. On the footer on each page there is a link called “See all notes for this SearchWiki” clicking on this link will bring you to a page, where the sites with the most “ups” will be displaying on the top page. Kinda like a “digg” version of the search result.
Only For Google Account Users
The “SearchWiki” links, and voting system is only available to signed-in Google users. This means, if your site is used by people that most probably don’t got Google accounts, this wont affect your site at all. Since your visitors won’t see the “SearchWiki” links.
Video Explaining The Deal
Below is a video from Google explaining the the SearchWiki system.
Will This Affect The Regular Search Results?
Well, as I wrote some sentences ago, Google says your voting only will affect your own search results. But, I think, if this system gets good, and not that easy cheatable the voting might get included as a part of the algorithm. But until that, your voting can still make more visitors coming to your or somebody else’s site, because Google got a page where you can see all notes about one search term. That means, on that pages, the sites that got most votes, will be displayed on the top.
Ex. All notes for the term “Games” in Google.
As you can see in the screnshot above the top ranking site now is addictinggames.com and miniclip.com on second place. If you do this search without adding the SearchWiki values miniclip.com will rank above addictinggames.com. Most probably this will not mean that big of a different since, both these sites is so big brands, sp they get the traffic they should anyway. But, whats interesting to see is the number 3 result. “Scolex Games“. That sites grabs the 3. place only by having 3 votes. Scolex Games is no where to be found in the origianl search result, but with only 3 votes, it ranks good in the SearchWiki result. That means, if you get 4 votes, you will be ranking in the third spot for this really high volume search term.
The question is, how many people will be scrolling down on the search page, and click the “All Notes” link, when they can get good result on the first page? In the start it will probably be quite a few, but many of them would be webmasters like you and be. Will this be something for the future?
What do you think about this?
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i never try this one, thanks for the info!
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This is a great way to better customize your search engines you can put the search results you want up front. But than you don’t know where you really rank on other servers so its hard to check your real rankings for your website
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Well it is a bold step for Google, although I think that in the long run they will probably not implement it, as it can be easily gamed, and we all know how much Google hates things that are gamed, just look at Google’s stance on paid links.
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It’d be nice if it actualy affected global search results. If every registered user could vote for one site with certain search term only once it’d help eliminate spammers. And we’d get more accurate results.
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Well, I think there needs to be a feature where you can “report” the website with just one click. I think that would be a great way to help eliminate the spam. Zaslony, I still think its too early though to rely on this to effect the search results, like I said its too easily gamed.
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So now that several months have passed since this has been launched, any updates ? I wonder how much this has impacted the SEO community. I assume that most google users have no idea about this feature and even if they did, they wouldn’t care. But then there is the “more informed” part of google users and I wonder how has this impacted their work/hobbies/shopping/whatever they use Google for.
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Nothing’s changed I guess. They could’ve taken at least some of the suggestion people made. But noooo… it’d be too much work. Google should finaly do something about people trying to game it.
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