For better or worse, on November 20th, Google rolled out their new SearchWiki feature. Before you will see the feature, and can use it, you’ll need a Google Account, and have to be logged in.
Google says, “With just a single click you can move the results (you’ll see an arrow and an ‘X’ to the right of each result) you like to the top or add a new site. You can also write notes attached to a particular site and remove results that you don’t feel belong. These modifications will be shown to you every time you do the same search in the future. SearchWiki is available to signed-in Google users. We store your changes in your Google Account. If you are wondering if you are signed in, you can always check by noting if your username appears in the upper right-hand side of the page.”
Google also says, “The changes you make only affect your own searches.” But is that really true? I can’t help but wonder about a few aspects of this new “feature.”
- How many users have, will have, or ever know what a Google Account is?
- User comments – “the wisdom of the masses” or “the madness of crowds” or perhaps a place of disgruntled people or unethical marketers. It seems more people voice their complaints than their satisfaction. Oh, by the way, your Google nickname is displayed to everyone along with your comment. (Using links at the bottom of the search results page (SERP), you may edit/delete your comments, and view comments from others.)
- One can only speculate on whether or not Google will consider the “popularity” of sites that have been moved to the top by many users, when Google serves search results to those without Google Accounts.
- Bosses could be fooled by in-house webmasters, and unscrupulous search engine optimization (SEO) firms could show prospects whatever rankings they wished (good or bad), by saying, “here is a screenshot of Google search results for this morning.”
- Add an URL – Will Google track (I believe the answer is yes) and use that information for general search results? We can only speculate about the latter. Speaking of adding an URL, wouldn’t you just bookmark it instead of adding it to search results?
The release of SearchWiki also makes me start to wonder how much Google is in tune with their average user as opposed to those in Silicon Valley.
Time and users will tell, but I can’t help but think Google would have better spent the time and money on their “Proposal for reducing U.S. dependence on fossil fuels.”
Until next time…