Google Launches SearchWiki, Customizable Search Results

Google today launched SearchWiki, which allows users to bump their favorite sites up the list of results.

Google’s Cedric Dupont, Product Manager, and Corin Anderson, Software Engineer, announced the feature’s launch yesterday via the company’s official blog. SearchWiki is a way for users to customize their searches by re-ranking, deleting, adding, and commenting on results. It allows you to move the results you like to the top, write notes and attach them to a particular site, remove results that you don’t think belong there or are that useful and lastly, add sites you feel are relevant but aren’t already listed.

Users have to sign in to make changes and sign in under the same username if they want the modifications they made to reappear after the same search is entered. Of course SearchWiki is not a way for every Tom, Dick and Harry to play search Search Engine Optimization Gods. Your modifications, will of course, only affect you. Like we hinted at before, Google stores your changes in your Google Account, so no one else but you is going to see your blog listed as the number one result when you enter in certain keywords.

One of the cooler things you can try is clicking the button at the bottom of the page that says "See all notes for this SearchWiki," which will show you all the notes other users have entered in for the same query.

Aside from the last feature we don’t see this making all that much of a difference to our search results because we can’t imagine searching the same thing twice all that often. Usually, one search and a bookmark is all it takes. However, while Google’s "if it ain’t broke, tweak it" approach might seem a little pointless to us, trial and error is, without a doubt, a huge part of innovation. Check out SearchWiki and let us know what you think.