
Google SearchWiki Vanishes  - nreece
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/22/google-searchwiki-vanishes/
======
paddy_m
I added about 6 things to search wiki, 3 related to sites that I own, 3 that
were generally helpful.

Google can figure out that I own the sites because of google analytics.

When searchwiki disapeared I thought it was because I was flagged for abuse.
Apparently not.

~~~
paddy_m
nope, I wasn't flagged for abuse. Search wiki just reappeared.

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shimi
In a perfect world that would have been a great feature. But I can't see
google preventing abuse.

In the past I worked for this company and we all (200+ of us) gave our product
a 5 start rating review at download.com.

This rating system is more open to abuse

~~~
gojomo
You have to be a logged-in user to rearrange results, and (at least
initially/officially) only you see your own rearrangements. As a logged-in
user, Google can view your entire activity to judge your trustworthiness
before propagating your judgements to others.

Compared to link spam or click spam (on ads or via toolbars), that's _easier_
to evaluate.

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tlrobinson
If Google can prevent SEO abuse and spam I think it's a great idea and would
like to see it come back. But that's a huge "if".

~~~
briansmith
it is easy to prevent SEO abuse and SPAM: Don't let people's rankings affect
the search results for anybody except them.

That isn't to say that they have to ignore all the feedback they get. They can
still analyze the feedback and use statistical analysis to help find places
where their ranking algorithms are doing poorly. Once they discover problems,
they can fix the ranking algorithms.

Eventually, they might be able to spam-proof this feedback system to an extent
where they could incorporate it directly into the ranking function. However,
this isn't happening now.

As far as I've heard, this is exactly the plan they have.

~~~
amichail
It was already used for ranking. Just take a look at the ranking when viewing
everyone's notes.

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vaksel
good, the feature was pretty annoying. Although can't say I used it that much,
once I figured out that once you logged out it would go back to normal.

\+ I can't help but think that this thing would be ripe for abuse, think SEO
but instead of optimizing your page, they'd just use bots to vote up your
site, or vote down your competitor

~~~
briansmith
A person's SearchWiki input doesn't change the rankings that other people get.

~~~
amichail
Actually it does! Take a look at what you get when viewing everyone's notes
for a search query.

~~~
briansmith
"The changes you make only affect your own searches."

\-- [http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/searchwiki-make-
searc...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/searchwiki-make-search-your-
own.html)

~~~
amichail
They are talking about the main ranking. There is however a secondary link
ranking when viewing everyone's notes that is affected.

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vaksel
oh, and didn't really vanish, it just moved to
<http://www.google.com/experimental/>

~~~
gojomo
I don't see it at /experimental/, so it looks like it's been put on ice to
work out some kinks that turned up with the big launch.

Some guesses at what might have happened:

() failure to provide an easy way to turn it off drove user satisfaction down;
workaround of logging-out is against Google's tracking interests

() some part of the system behaved poorly under full load

() futzing with the natural results distracted people from clicking on ads
putting a noticeable dent in revenues

() something about the commenting system brought in embarrassing content (hate
speech, etc.) faster than they could control

I suspect a slower rollout to follow after some adjustments.

~~~
kwamenum86
I think the comments are a horrible idea and could really ruin the Google
brand. You can use Youtube as a case study. They have an active community and
a flagging system but there are still several- _ahem_ \- questionable comments
on that site. Attaching use generated content to search results just seems
like a bad idea all around. The ability to switch the feature on and off is
good but maybe the comments should be left out altogether unless they have a
great moderation system- which they do not.

