Google’s New SearchWiki

On November 20th, 2008 Google released it’s new SearchWiki that allows you to rearrange how you view your search engine results pages.
Here’s a quick video from Google explaining how it works. Once you watch this, I’ll give you my two cents on how this might affect your websites SEO positioning.

You can view Google's video here.

All right, so after watching the video you now know that you can:

• Rearrange the search results to your liking;
• Add notes to websites for your future reference;
• Delete sites that you don’t want to see come up in your search results;
• Add a web page that you’d like to see in your own search results and
• Even read other people’s notes on websites if you like.

Keep in mind that the SearchWiki will only work if you’re signed into Google. If you are signed out of Google you’ll only see Google’s search results, not your personalized search results that you set up in SearchWiki.

How this relates to your overall SEO process.

Since SearchWiki has just been released to the public, we don’t quite know yet how it will affect search engine listings. However, I do have a few theories as to what Google is trying to accomplish with this seemingly helpful way to rearrange items on your search results pages.

One idea is that Google wants to incorporate real users information with their own algorithms. Since you, the end user of a search engine needs to remain happy, Google can only assume so much information about you. For years they have attempted to try and figure out what you, the web searcher, might be looking for when you use Google. This has been the basis for their algorithm over the past few years which has been updated, tweaked, and refined based on its own artificial intelligence.

With a SearchWiki, Google can now move out of the “assumption” phase of determining what you’d like to see in a SERP (search engine results page) and incorporate actual users preferences based on what sites they move up to the top of their own listings, what sites they delete and what sites they add to their search listings.

Now keep in mind that only you can see the search listings you personally have chosen. The actual search results that you see if you aren’t signed into Google will be Google’s typical search results.

However, I believe that as more and more people start using the SearchWiki, we’ll see this information end up as part of the overall Google search algorithm. So in essence, you’re building the algorithm for Google.

As with all things that could be a possibility and end up as part of a search results page, this is open to SPAM.

Here’s how…

First, while signed into Google, you can add notes to each individual website. Since we aren’t sure yet, (but we can theorize all we want) whether or not these notes will be taken into account into regular search results pages, we can assume that Google will someday incorporate these notes into their overall algorithm.

This means that a search engine spammer could, theoretically, hire a large group of people to sign into Google and create keyword-rich notations for a particular website. Of course, we don’t know if these notes will be taken into account in Google’s algorithm, but again, we’re just theorizing here.

Additionally, these same folks could hire another group of people and add a website that they’d like to see listed at the top of their search results for a certain keyword phrase. Enough people adding a website could trigger to Google that this is a website a lot of people would like to see listed at the top of a SERP for a certain keyword.

Google’s SearchWiki, at least to me, is acting much like a voting system that you’d see at a social bookmarking site but instead of making your personal rearrangement public, it’s private (well, to you AND Google). At a typical bookmarking site, the more people who vote on a site, the further to the top the listing moves. I believe that Google is doing the same thing without actually calling this a “bookmarking” site. Kind of a Google 2.0 if you will. Google is taking notes as to what you do, but instead of sharing your arrangement with the world like you could share a bookmark with anyone you’d like, you’re only sharing your information with Google. Who, I believe will in fact use this in their future algorithm updates.

Keep in mind however, that not everyone on the planet has a Google account (much to Google’s dismay I’m sure) and so couldn’t possibly take into account every last web searchers preferences. But, there are plenty of us out there; enough to make a difference in Google’s entire algorithm.

Something else that could be potentially hazardous to search results is that of deleting a website when using SearchWiki.
Let’s say that another group of people are hired to purposefully delete a website from their search engine results listings when signed into Google. Could this then mean that with enough money, and enough people at their disposal, that a rogue company could take out their competition?

Remember this is all theory.

So let’s say that Company A has the #1 position and Company B has the #2 position in a Google search results page for a certain keyword.

Company B desperately wants that #1 position.

So rogue, underhanded Company B hires a vast amount of people to log into Google, and remove Company A’s listing from their personal search results perhaps affecting the overall positioning of Company A.

Of course, there’s a lot more that goes into a great search results listing but you can’t help but wonder if someone removing sites from their listings, adding keyword-rich notes to sites and then arranging certain sites to the top of their listings will make an overall difference in the entire future Google algorithm.

Again, these are simply theories. There’s nothing based in fact here, these are just the ramblings of an 8-year SEO veteran. So I wouldn’t take them into account whatsoever.