Last week, we highlighted Microsoft Research's URank, an experimental search engine interface that allows users to rearrange their search results from Live.com. Now, Garett Rogers reports that Google is slowly releasing a very similar product called SearchWiki, which will allow users to modify their search results in Google Search. Judging from what we have seen about this feature so far, users will be able to move results up and down, hide results, and even suggest their own.
Besides restructuring search results, SearchWiki also looks like it will allow users to add annotations to searches and it seems like these comments can then be made public as well.
It is not clear if Google will consider these changes when it calculates its overall search results, though we assume that Google will surely collect this data and use it in some form or another.
Google hinted at this SearchWiki experiment in a blog post from August and rumors about a digg-style Google Search interface have floated around the Internet for much longer. Google has always released certain experiments to a small sub-set of its users.
However, as Alex Chitu points out, everybody can see a trace of SearchWiki by appending "&swm=2" to the URL of a search results page. This leads us to believe that Google might be planning for a wider rollout of this feature in the near future.
If you would like to see this new functionality in action, Justin Hileman recorded a short screencast that demonstrates these experimental features.
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all Read/WriteWeb posts
"It is not clear if Google will consider these changes when it calculates its overall search results..."
I can answer that: when user A makes a change to their search results, it doesn't affect user B's search results.
Posted by: Matt Cutts | October 29, 2008 11:22 AM
You can find more information and screenshots on http://www.enterprisesocialsearch.com/blog/2008/10/google-is-back-with-social-search-and-calls-it-searchwiki.html .
It is still an experimental feature for a random subset of users. While Digg is useful for promoting news information it is hard to imagine how the collective rating of search results could impact the quality of Google. With many users only using a couple of keywords in their search query it is hard to bring the necessary context needed for an appropriate rating of the search results.
On a less social aspect, being able to organize and see previous notes on search results when you redo a search query can be personally useful. How many times do you do the same search again and again because you forgot the websites you were looking for, but not the path to get there. Having the possibility to leave some marks along this path can be handy.
A tricky usability problem in SearchWiki is that you generally build confidence or have comments only after you’ve opened a search result. So going back to your result page when you had the result you were looking for is not so obvious
Posted by: tlg | October 29, 2008 3:38 PM
I have used Search Wiki for about 12.5 hours and I now thoroughly hate myself. I can now freely admit that Google and Yahoo and even MSN and Live do it better than I do. I got all excited this morning and promoted all of my favorite sites for all of my favorite search terms. Then, by the end of the day when I wanted new info...guess what? Yeah, same old info! I have handcuffed my ability to learn. It's like going to your local library and roping off all of the aisles except for your favorite reference books. Isn’t this basically saving a website into your favorites? Heck, we already have that ability!
I was wrong, you are right. I am stupid, you are smart. I am ugly, you are beautiful! Please tell me what is best for me, bring back normal search!!
What makes the developers of Search Wiki think that we are smart enough to know what's best for our searching needs? I ended up having to promote all of my friends' sites just in case I have my laptop with me and we search for one of their KWs!! It's live social blackmail and it's killing my ability to search smart.
Posted by: Grant Hammond | November 21, 2008 6:34 PM