SEO Marketing Services | Internet Marketing Specialist

All these “up arrow”, “down arrow” or “cross” icons make me feel you are not my good ol’ Google anymore. M leaving you my “search-love”. Please, be good to your new users. Adios Amigo.

It seems Google is up to something big, something wicked … as a result you can observe some nervous feelings among SEO professionals. There lies a wish, deep down in their hearts … they won’t say it publicly but when you look in their eyes, it’s there … the message that says “Google! Please don’t be Evil” (“Don’t be evil” happens to be Google’s informal company Motto). Enough of the drama, but fact remains that our favorite search engine is undergoing some serious changes that can very well end in a disaster (for small online businesses, SEO professionals, common Googlers or even for Google itself). Thanks God, there’s an option to turn off this thing, if it had not been the case, I’d have dumped Google as my default search engine for good, with a note saying “Dear Google, I was mighty pleased with your effectiveness till now, but now you’ve ruined the fun by trying to be too smart and read my mind. Plus, all those “up arrow”, “down arrow” or “cross” icons make me feel you are not my good ol’ Google anymore. M leaving you my “search-love”. Please, be good to your new users. Adios Amigo.”

How is it performing so far?

SearchWiki was officially launched at 20^th of Nov, 2008. To be honest the idea didn’t look like threatening enough to change the face of SEO or even online search. Though we don’t have any surveys or actual figures to pass a judgment, but we saw many people coming up with negative remarks immediately. The catch is that recently Google tried a similar thing at their paid results as well, that clearly shows the tool is having its fair share of users. Otherwise, why would Google try something in its paid advertisements that was not welcomed even in organic search results?

Probably the point we miss, when we say SearchWiki has already failed is … that normally those who are actively speaking against this new tool, are old Google users, who feel comfortable with the classic features and appearance. Whereas SearchWiki has probably been launched after seeing the huge success of social networks, supposedly its target users are those who are not really “search savvy”, they like to interact or stay in touch with the world one way or another, plus they like to “take things in their own hands”. And because they are not really search savvy, chances are that they won’t even notice the change. For the reason that SearchWiki is enabled by default (when you are signed in any of the Google’s service), they won’t bother turning it off, continuing to use it (without knowing that Google may save their browsing history or preferences to provide them with personalized search results in future).

SearchWiki’s possible influences on SEO:

Every time SEO people are starting to settle on some SEO methods, Google come up with some modification that leave everybody mulling. Is SearchWiki one of those possible changes in Google ranking criteria? I hope not, because it will encourage some absolutely time-wasting practices like commenting and voting for your own websites, or disapproving and submitting negative comments about your competitor’s website. All of these tactics are far from being productive, and won’t add any value to the cyber world. Already, Google has introduced the “human element” by hiring those quality raters and putting them to work, now using SearchWiki data as some kind of indicators can prove to be a little too much.

SearchWiki reminds me of the classic case of “new coke”; what do you think? Will it suffer the same fate or not? Please, don’t hesitate to share.