Customize Your Search Results Using Google’s New ‘SearchWiki’
If you’ve been wanting a way to tweak Google’s search results to suit your whims, the company is hearing your call — you can now edit and rank Google search results.
SearchWiki, as the new feature is known, appears to be Google’s answer to Wikia Search and Microsoft’s URank, both of which give you ways to interact with search results, ranking them, leaving notes and viewing comments and notes from other users.
The changes you make using Google SearchWiki are stored and will be reflected in repeat searches. So far, however, unlike Wikia Search, SearchWiki does not incorporate your feedback into Google’s ranking system.
As a result, while the new feature may have “wiki” in the name, SearchWiki in fact is more like a public bookmarking system than a wiki.
Given that, at least for now, your input and ranking affects no one but you, adding comments and rearranging search results is perhaps most akin to saving a page on a social bookmarking site like Delicious — others can see that you liked a page (or didn’t) and read any thoughts you want to add.
Right now the new SearchWiki features are only available on select accounts, but should become available to everyone over the next few days. If you’re logged in to Google, look for two new, very small icons next to each search result — there’s an up arrow and plus sign. Click either icon and a pop up will appear telling you about the new features.
Once you click “enable” you can rearrange search results and comment on pages. Other users will be able to see your rankings and comments by clicking the “All notes for this SearchWiki” link at the bottom of the page.
There’s also an option to see all of your own notes and, perhaps most useful, to add a page to the list. As it stands right now SearchWiki seems primarily like a way to customize results for things you frequently search.
For example, a Python programmer might want a Google search for Python to return some quick links to the documentation, the Cheeseshop (don’t ask) and maybe some frequently used Google Code projects, rather than the default results which include things like links to download Python, an xkcd comic and other pages that are not necessarily useful to a developer.
The monumental flaw in that otherwise appealing scenario is that there doesn’t seem to be a way to turn the new features off. That’s a pretty major oversight on Google’s part — what if you customize a page, but then decide you want to see Google’s rankings? The only way to do that is to log out, which is a pain if you’re logged into Gmail or other Google services. Google has violated the number one rule of software development — always have an undo button.
In addition to that oversight, it’s unclear exactly what Google plans to do with SearchWiki in the long run — what about affecting other people’s search results? Obviously that opens up some serious spamming/gaming concerns, but rest assured that Google is, if nothing else, gathering and storing your preference and search tweaks. Will that someday be a part of the page ranking algorithm? It’s impossible to say for sure, but it certainly seems likely.
Also worth noting is that this isn’t an experimental feature, or a beta release — it’s a live feature on one of the most visited pages on the web. That’s a pretty risky move for the normally conservative company.
While the SearchWiki features certainly look useful, the inability to turn them off makes me hesitate to use them. Hopefully Google will correct that oversight in the very near future.
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