Sphinn - 6 Reasons Why SearchWiki was launched and it’s mistakes

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6 Reasons Why SearchWiki was launched and it’s mistakes

Went Hot: December 3, 2008 - 6:02 pm
Posted By: ImJustCreative 215 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://on.eti.me)
Category: Google SEO

So, SearchWiki came, died, and rose from the dead. But whether you like it, is irrelevant. Why would Google launch this new product with no beta first? We had Google Suggest for a few months and then it was live for all to use and see. But Google SearchWiki becomes live within a few weeks of even hearing about it, with no beta to play with. I have 5 reasons why I think Google did this.

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from JoshuaSciarrino 215 days ago #

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So what you guys think? Off base? Right on? Additions?

from MattCutts 214 days ago #

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I didn't read the article, but the summary is completely wrong. See e.g. http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/28/straight-out-of-left-field-google-experimenting-with-digg-style-voting-on-search-results/
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/14/google-bucket-testing-new-digg-like-search-interface/

where Google beta tested versions of this for almost a year.

from JoshuaSciarrino 214 days ago #

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Thanks, I guess I was misinformed. Obviously since the techcrunch post brings up this all in November of last year.
But either way. Read the article. :) You might like it.

from Sugarrae 214 days ago #

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1. maybe
2. they already have tons of user data... TONS... they have more traffic share than your own article quotes IE as having browser share. They aren't hurting for data, period.
3. It's a little like saying Wal-mart is worried about a 10 chain store merging with a 20 chain store... I'm sure it's a thought and a concern, but I don't think it's enough to cause or even highly contribute to a product launch.
4, I can't get the point of the paragraph as far as why is contributed to LAUNCH of the product with so many analogies... so can't comment on it.
5. Google is too arrogant to believe anything is a Google killer.
6. It's common knowledge that Digg's original platform was built for like 1K from a rent a coder. Digg's asset is their traffic and userbase. It's no surprise since Google didn't need either that they'd opt out of spending 200 million on it.

Funny thing is, you missed a totally obvious possible reason - Google launches the equivalent of public spam control at the same time they fire 10-15% of their workers... I am guessing there were many quality raters among them. How coincidental that quality control is now being outsourced to the public for free.

from JoshuaSciarrino 214 days ago #

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Thanks for the feedback Rae, unique perspective. :)

#4 = because they can :)

from shalom 213 days ago #

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I don't think #6 is realistic - others points are good

from shalom 213 days ago #

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@sugarrae - outsourcing the quality control by giving users the ability to rate is kind of backwards. Spam is caused by giving control to others, limiting spam is done through internal moderation (either human or technology). Providing searchwiki functionality if anything will create a type of voting spam that they will have to deal with - I doubt it will replace the efforts of the workers they fired.

I'm not sure, but I would have to guess that even 10K+ human editors is not enough to moderate a search engine manually - so they probably had very little success and in weighing it against the current econmic situation made a decission to scrap the project - Just look at Dmoz in terms of moderating a large index by human efforts - 81K+ editors for approx. 590,000 categories and even that is not enough. [There are obviously bigger issues with dmoz - im not referring to - but it gives you concept in terms of labor required]

from JoshuaSciarrino 213 days ago #

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@shalom - Great comparison with Dmoz. :) I wish I would've thought of that myself.

from onreact 213 days ago #

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Did you mean "its"? ;-)

Google was testing it behind the secenes for a while. Then it was introduced over night with no warning, opt in or opt out and it had many issues. Some of the issue are still there. So all in all this article is correct, no matter what TechCrunch wrote a year ago.

from Sugarrae 212 days ago #

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>>>I'm not sure, but I would have to guess that even 10K+ human editors is not enough to moderate a search engine manually - so they probably had very little success

If you think their quality raters were looking at the entire index, well... fighting the war on spam with 10K humans gets a lot easier when you only focus on certain areas.

from JoshuaSciarrino 212 days ago #

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