Social networking and search engine results

With the popularity of social networking websites ‘ where people collaborate and exchange information online ‘ it was only a matter of time before this power of human interaction is harnessed within search engines. This month has seen the launch of the alpha test version of the new Wikia Search tool, as well as reports that Yahoo! is testing the integration of del.icio.us bookmarking tags within their search listings.

At the start of January the long-awaited Wikia Search tool was launched in an alpha version. This project has been developed by Jimmy Wales and the team behind the successful Wikipedia resource and is designed to be an open source search tool that develops from user contributions and feedback. At the moment the search results are limited and the site is quite basic as they freely admit on the Home Page yet they also claim that this site ‘represents the first draft of the future of search’.

The intention of Wikia Search is to rely on an extensive and active community of users working together in an open, transparent and public way to develop this as a powerful resource. This openness will include access to how the search systems and algorithms operate. It will certainly be a fascinating project to watch develop ‘ and to contribute to – over the coming months and is bound to face some difficulties and criticisms about elements attempting to ‘fix’ the search results to their own means, particularly if the tool ever reaches the same popularity as Yahoo! and MSN, let alone Google!

Possibly as a response to the use of human-generated content or recommendations, there have been recent reports of Yahoo! testing some alternative search results that include data from its del.icio.us social bookmarking site. An article on Search Engine Land includes some sample screenshots which show that a listing in the search results will display the number of users that have bookmarked that site or page on del.icio.us and how the page has been tagged.

Yahoo! have apparently said that the del.icio.us results are not affecting the ranking algorithm at this point but are simply adding an additional layer of information for the user to assess within the site details being ranked and clearly those sites that have been bookmarked by more people could imply that they are a good resource. We will wait to see whether this test is eventually rolled out into the main search results and how this data may eventually be used to influence search results on Yahoo!, if at all.

If you’d like to know more about these developments in the web search market and how they may impact your website in the future, please contact us.

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