BREAKING NEWS: Google Search Wiki
| by trigatch4 on November 21st, 2008 |
This is too exciting not to post about. Google has completely altered the way search results by including a Wiki aspect that allows users to thumbs up/down rankings and comment on them as well. You’re probably asking yourself if today is April Fools Day… but it is not.
Here is some proof:
This is pure insanity. Apparently your “rankings” only affect your OWN future search results but I’m quite sure there are ways to implement/view across the board rankings. If the life of digg is any indication, there are going to be some SEEERRRRIOUUUUSSSS attempts to game the system. And let me tell ya… if I could… I would… there is just too much to gain.
Yahoo Buzz appears to be doing alright but this is a completely different monster. This is a Wiki that encompasses every single webpage on every single site and can use any possible search term as an entry. This is earth shattering stuff right here.
In the past there had been rumors that Google was in the market to buy Digg… perhaps they were just collecting enough research to do it themselves. If Google’s little experiment works and their expectedly long beta version of Search Wiki actually works… Google might do what many thought was impossible… and gobble a ton MORE market share for search.
What implications this will have on Affiliate Marketing remains to be seen. Remember how quickly Google Lively came and went? Yeah… you might not even remember what it is and for good reason. But Lively was out of the box weirdness… Search Wiki is real and I think, at some point, here to stay.
The question is can Google master a completely new algo that takes user rating and comments into play? However it plays out, you can guarantee that there are thousands of people following this every move, waiting to exploit any opportunities to push their own pages to the top of Google Search Wiki.
[Via TechCrunch, Google Blog]
1. Dan Root wrote on November 22, 2008
Rob,
This certainly is very interesting, and to be honest, there wouldn’t be much point in not gathering the data from users and applying it to the global search results.
I find myself asking one major question…
What if another site that has better information on a topic comes out but you have already selected an older site (which was the best at one point) to be at the top of your results? Does this mean that I will never be turned on to the new and improved site? Or, will Google somehow find a way to work it in and get my attention?
This development sure is mind boggling from an SEO perspective. I’d like to get your thoughts on this via phone or chat.
2. Kirk wrote on November 24, 2008
I don’t think this is anything near “a completely new algo” as it’s simply a couple new kinds of click tied to your google account or cookie or however they track people.
What this will do is enlist the help of EVERY google user to provide the human intelligence that bots can never deliver.
Here’s the difference I see in my search experience:
As a seasoned internet marketer, I know sites that were built to make a buck and it’s frustrating to me when they dominate the listings versus the real content sites I’m after. The google bots have a limit to their abilities and people have become great at SEO to the point where, to a guy like me, they are missing a bunch of site that I consider spam.
Now I can demote the adsense sites, BANs sites, phpbay sites, ezine artiles, etc from my results when searching for real authoritative information. The only kind of SEO trickery that will “work” on me is to provide great content.
Of course that’s exactly what Google wants at the top of their listings.
Genius.