I read an interesting post on Google SearchWiki this morning, then a tirade against it from Michael Gray, and then got involved in a big debate about it at work so I thought I would consolidate my thoughts here in my sub-basement of solitude.
There seem to be two conflicting opinions on SearchWiki at the moment, both in my office and floating around the internet. These are the various opinions and points of view I have heard/read on the subject so far:
(1) SearchWiki Bad!
SearchWiki is open to abuse, it may be counter intuitive to search, it’s a copy of a Microsoft/Wikipedia project (it’s not as Matt Cutts pointed out here and here), it will fill Google with viagra and porn, and just generally a lot of people railing against chaaaaaaaange.
(2) SearchWiki Good!
It allows me to filter out my results making personal search even more intuitive, it allows you to share your comments on results with other interested Googlers, it will help reduce spam and black hat SEO, I just love Google and everything they do is great.
My Two Pen’arth
Now I haven’t made up my mind which side of the fence I’ve fallen on yet; as a searcher it’s extremely appealing for me to filter my own results, and remove anything I feel is irrelevant or not of interest. It also goes some way to reducing Google’s Big Brother image, by placing some of the responsibility for monitoring search results on me, the user. This means instead of just reporting a spammy site to Google, I can smack that bitch down myself and never see it again – surely a good thing.
On the other hand as an SEO, I don’t want to see my personally filtered search results, and the idea of people filtering away my clients sites makes me need clean pants. However, as I optimise my client’s sites I am helping them become more valuable; by adhering to Google’s guidelines, by increasing their content, by making them a valued part of their industry online.
All this goes toward improving Google’s results anyway, and unless you wear a black hat when you go to work, Google’s users will not vote your sites down, becuase they will be useful, relevant results in virtue of the great SEO you’ve implemented.
So is the sword of Damocles finally ready to drop on the spammers, the black hats and the cowboys? We’ll see…
3 Comments
I really like the functionality of the promote & remove feature. Being able to change my listings like could mean the end of my bookmarks. Just by searching by category, I can see the sites I’ve previously liked and promoted, and remove the junk from my listings. Why would I even bookmark a site again? From any PC, I can log into iGoogle and type in my keyword to see the results. Usefully, this would also show any new listings that weren’t present when I first searched for the term : much more useful than a static bookmark menu.
On the other hand, the comments feature seems likely to succumb to abuse. Already there are porn/spam links in some comments, I get enough viagra promoting e-mails without getting spam in my Google search results.
That’s my tuppence…and to think I could have fed the birds.
Yeah I think it’s a positive step forward for personalised search functionality, and in theory it means if your site is well optimised and full of good content you’ll be targetting an audience much more likely to browse your site for longer, and convert.
Very helpful information about SEO. I learned a lot from it, keep it up!