in a recent blog post google ask the question ‘Have you ever wanted to mark up Google search results?’
personally, i can’t say i have and regardless of your desire to, google now gives you the ability via ‘searchwiki’, a technology that’s been rolled out to all google account holders with largely negative media reaction. some bloggers have been quick to criticise the technology’s lack of an ‘opt-out’ preference and the spam that’s already appeared in the results. users can of course simply ignore the new tools if they wish but there’s something about searchwiki and the way it’s been introduced that’s got some people really wound up
searchwiki lets users comment on, re-order, remove or add to their search results. these changes are then then saved and re-appear when the relevant link is returned in a later search. although the re-ordering does not affect standard searches there is the option to see a list of results that others have promoted and commented upon. picture ‘digg’ applied to the google homepage. very much like the social news site, users can also give a thumbs up or down to other people’s comments, while spam, abusive and illegal comments can be reported by users and will be removed by google
current comments add little value to search results
i’d expect to see something like this initially offered via google labs and have it undergo a few rounds of optimisation and feedback before it got anywhere near the google homepage but instead google have gone for the big bang approach. they’re betting this will be big and as product manager, cedric dupont put it
I would call this revolutionary. It’s a huge step, not a baby step in the world of search. This is part of an obvious movement of the web to become more participatory, so Google search is adapting to this movement
it’s not immediately clear what problem google are trying to solve with searchwiki. i’m sure that somewhere in the business plan they are going to mine the user generated data for advertising purposes but initially the move has caused some degree of confusion. perhaps one reason behind the negative reviews is that google search isn’t broken and doesn’t need fixing. it’s one of the few tools people use on a daily basis that doesn’t attract criticism and complaints, it does what it does very well and does it in a simple and elegant fashion. when google hit the mainstream people were crying out for a decent search engine, now-a-days i don’t hear of people crying out for revolutionary changes to google. perhaps the creatives at google are getting bored with tweeking the existing search engine and want something new to do. i’d rather they spent their time finalising their ever expanding list of ‘perpetually in beta’ on-line services or concentrated on improving searching beyond just text, incorporating video and audio searches perhaps
in order to explain how the service works google have presented a number of ‘real world’ examples, pitched to sell the idea of using searchwiki to it’s users. and they do have to try and sell it as without the input and effort of their customers the new technology is dead in the water. none of the examples are particularly convincing though
Maybe you’re an avid hiker and the trail map site you always go to is in the 4th or 5th position and you want to move it to the top, or perhaps it’s not there at all and you’d like to add it.
why would you want to move a result up the list? if it’s for your own personal use i would expect someone to either bookmark the site or in the future perform a more relevant search… or just click 4th or 5th position in the list. these scenarios just don’t sell the idea, there’s nothing that matches up to the ‘revolutionary’ changes that dupont speaks of
Most people are not going to engage with it and think about where the results should be – if it’s above this one or below that one. This is really for a motivated or elite core of user who really wants to participate in the process. Lots of people have tried so-called ‘social search’, combining algorithmic search with human editorial input, because the perception is that humans have the ability to craft a better result in any given situation because they can make distinctions machines can’t.
said greg sterling, an editor with searchengineland.com
unfortunately humans are also prone to favoritism and fanboy brand allegiance, whereas machines are not. Imagine a search for ‘what’s the best mobile phone’ or ‘what operating system is best’, for the regular user they would be unwittingly looking at some very biased results indeed
it’s a struggle to picture how the majority of google’s search customers will use the technology on a daily basis. granted, over time the idea of having cloud based ‘active bookmarks’ might be quite handy and putting yourself two or three years down the road on-line collaborative bookmarking could be a big thing but google aren’t really pitching it that way so far. it will take time before enough user content has been added, moderated and filtered so that it adds real value to the existing search engine routines, if it ever does
more concerning is the potential negative effects the service will have on google’s current ‘clean’ image. no-one wants to see the kind of childish flaming, biases and bickering that goes on in forums all over the web creeping into their search results. google will also have a fair amount of work to do keeping the comments and site rankings free of spam and self promotions, something that techcrunch’s mike arrington has already experienced and criticisedstrongly. google are also mindful of the potential for companies to claim liable over comments associated with their site. google state
We’ve always been supportive of tools that allow people to better express themselves online, and SearchWiki is no exception. In cases where people express themselves improperly or illegally against websites, we’ve made simple tools readily available for websites so they can take action appropriately
how much of an admin burden this will prove to be and how much control a site has over it’s related comments remains to be seen, but there is scope for abuse of the system from both comment posters and moderators
google believe that the added value of user comments against search results would benefit it’s search customers but this raises concerns when you look a few years down the line and imagine a lot of value being added to search results in google and not as freely available content out there on the web itself. whilst this is all good news for google it would take a lot of the content away from competing search engines and place unfair competitive advantages in google’s hands
i’m sure that the main concerns being heard around the web aren’t because of something inherently wrong with the idea behind searchwiki but are instead the product of association with the broken dynamics of other social voting sites and the nature in which the change has been forced upon google account holders. google has always sold itself as a company that will ‘do no evil’ and as the number one search engine on the web they have created a responsibility for themselves. by suddenly forcing something on their account holders they are seen to have abused that in some way. in a way it’s a compliment to how much people love google search, it’s treated more like an essential public service than the front to one of the most successful companies ever
whether it’s all just an over-reaction by a vocal few of the start of a wider rejection of changes to what is essentially the cornerstone of the web we shall see. i am convinced that if searchwiki had been introduced to google labs last week it would have received good feedback and maybe even graduated in some part onto the main search site. with so many better products in perpetual beta it just seems so odd that one bound to cause controversy has appeared from nowhere and landed heavily on what is basically the internet’s homepage
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