Google SearchWiki boon or bust?

Nov 23, 2008

Categories: Social Media, Web 2.0

I didn’t really pay much attention to Google SearchWiki when it came out. Generally I’m not logged in to Google itself when I’m searching, so I didn’t notice.

Being the curious sort I finally logged in and messed around with it. I searched for “Tris Hussey” and “Tris”. The first came up with the usual results, the second the same. Of course on the second I knocked out all references to buffers or government agencies.

Mike Arrington doesn’t like it at all and a lot SEO types are more that a tad nervous about this. Personally I think it could be cool. Coming back to searches I’ve done without having to sift through results that I think are wrong, that seems smart to me. Scoble thinks so as well:

These features rock. They let me add notes to entries in Google. They let me tell the search engine which entries are better for me and they help Google’s business BIG TIME. See, truth is Google is too perfect lately. Eye track research shows that most of us aren’t going past the first link. That is a HUGE change from five years ago when we didn’t trust Google that much so we’d look down the first page looking at all the links and we’d probably even click on the second page to see what’s there.

link: Scobleizer — Tech geek blogger » Blog Archive Mike Arrington is wrong about Google search «

Now, what I’m wondering, and I’d suspect this to be the case, is if Google is gathering all the “doesn’t apply” clicks on a term to help guide better results. Granted, that is playing with fire in a big way.

Take my search for “Tris”. I was looking for me, the person, but someone else might actually be looking for tris the buffer. They should be able to get the results they want too.

I suspect, then, that what will really happen is Google will analyze all the data and do some checking. Yep searching for tris should yield me the person and the buffer (even if I personally don’t want to see it), but if someone has been doing a little black or gray SEO hacking, well getting some of those sites, pages, and results out of the way might be a good thing.

I guess playing by the rules all along is a good thing.

I did another test, just to show that Google is still working “correctly” even when you’re logged in I did a search for Sheila Christie (my girlfriend) and got the results I expected:

I am proud to say, and again showing how simply you can optimize a WP blog for the keywords you want, that Sheila’s blog (SheilaChristie.com) is already in the top 10 results and it hasn’t even been up that long.