Could there ever be a community-based search engine?

one that's maintained by us, for us... like wikipedia?

[londrum]

plenty of people have noticed that serps seem to be slipping down the search pages in favour of ads. there was a topic on webmasterworld recently that suggested a site in position number 2 wasn't even assured of a place above the fold.

you can't blame the search engine companies for trying to make money with their own site, of course, but i was wondering if there was an opening for the search-engine equivalent of wikipedia.

wikipedia is basically maintained by its users, for their own free use. and all they ask for is donations.
firefox is sort of the same -- an ad-free and cost-free piece of kit that we all find useful.

could someone create a search engine like that? a community-based one? i suppose it could start out ranking sites the same way that all the other engines do, and then maybe allow its users to vote somehow on which sites deserve their place.

i know that there would be difficult problems to overcome, in that people could easily figure out how to rank. but do you think that it's feasible?

[edited by: londrum at 4:03 pm (utc) on Nov. 25, 2009]

[steve40]

Just two years ago I would have said not a chance Because Google's Product was superior in every way to anything that could be produced with volunteers. BUT as Google increase the number of adds and add more and more Google Properties in the results it does give an opportunity for a new SE that gives cleaner results.

What many do not get is Google will continue to increase the number of it's own properties i.e. travel hubs, Youtube, Comparison Shopping, Google Maps and possibly if and when Google wave takes off may be included and then you have more and more Adwords Adds will be included to keep the Stock Holders Happy

[steve40]

I should add It will not be a Google Killer but could well provide an alternative Search Engine which could gain a minority market share

[bill]

You forget the recently failed Wikia Search? It was founded by Jimmy Wales and didn't go anywhere.

[jmccormac]

This is the link to the Wikia Search discussion list archive:
[lists.wikia.com...]

It might be worth reading. Search engines fail not because they are worse than others. They fail, typically, because their operators do not understand the business of Search.

Regards...jmcc