Wikia Search To Open Next Week

[engine]

After months of talk and a few weeks of invitation-only testing, Wikia Search is to open to the general public next week.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales says his goal is to let volunteers improve search technology collectively, the way Wikipedia lets anyone add or change entries, regardless of expertise.

"That reduces the sort of bottleneck of two or three firms really controlling the flow of search traffic," said Wales, chairman of Wikia Inc., the for-profit venture behind the search project.

Wikia Search To Open Next Week [ap.google.com]

[BillyS]

I thought it was interesting that they are already running Adsense on this website.

[nomis5]

Wow, what to make of that! The article has so few details on how a wikipedia approach might take on the established search engine giants.

Two thoughts though, first is Google's knol a pre-hit at wiki? Second, this appears to me to be an attack on the perceived integrity of Google. The "honest" user-driven wiki setting up in competition against the money-grabbing ogre Google? Is that how wiki are positioning themselves.

If so, wiki are in for a huge shock is my view. But then again .....

[Kufu]

Won't this engine be 'open' to huge abuse, since its inner workings are to be publicly know? Seems kind of silly to me, or am I missing something?

[loner]

This is cracking me up. I wonder what site will come up top on every search?

[keyplyr]

What is their crawl UA?

[Visi]

Am I to understand that Grub is being implemented again for this project? Hope not unless tendency to have 50 users crawl the same pages at high rates is fixed.

[Habtom]

Won't this engine be 'open' to huge abuse, since its inner workings are to be publicly know?

This is equivalent to saying Open Source programs are not secure as the source codes are publicly available, which is not necessarily true.

I wouldn't write it off just yet.

[ponyboy96]

IDK, it might be nice. I will have to see and use it first to be able to make my assessment. I can see spammers hammering it though. A Digg type user rating on the search results for each site displayed would be good.

I wonder if Google will drop Wiki in the SERPs now.

[JBPharma]

I think this is a good idea which could inspire some innovation around search formulas.

There will probably be some cross pollination from previous employees at the big giants contributing to the project...

Regardless of the people are detriment to the project, at least some programmers and SEO analysts will have the option to learn about a generally secret aspect of the web.

[Timetraveler]

I wonder if Google will drop Wiki in the SERPs now.

Doubtful, not until Knol is big enough to take Wikipedia's place in user search value.

[RichTC]

Cant see any reason for google to give extra weight to Wiki in its serps now as wiki are trying to take some of its search share - this move by wiki could be a mistake?

You dont see Yahoo search results or msn Live search results in googles results do you?

If google pull wiki from its index all together it will effect visitors to wiki and its new wiki search engine and it would be no great loss to google as i see it.

Meanwhile, it will be interesting how the new wiki search works out, frankly i would have thought serps with any human involvement would turn out to be a total biased nightmare of completely manipulated junk - time will tell

[Robert Charlton]

From today's New York Times article [nytimes.com]....

Like other search engines and sites that rely on the so-called "wisdom of crowds," the Wikia search engine is likely to be susceptible to people who try to game the system, by, for example, seeking to advance the ranking of their own site. Mr. Wales said Wikia would attempt to "block them, ban them, delete their stuff," just as other wiki projects do.

[Habtom]

Wikia would attempt to "block them, ban them, delete their stuff," just as other wiki projects do.

It would be a real naive opinion from their part, if they expect it to be that simple. The challenge in the search engines is a different one, and they need to come up with a different/stronger solution/approach.

People are more aggressive in trying to get what they want in search engines as opposed to the rest of wiki's projects.

[edited by: Habtom at 8:53 am (utc) on Jan. 7, 2008]