News

We've been playing around with Google's new SearchWiki feature that allows logged-in users to customise their search results by promoting or deleting results, by adding comments to a search result and by allowing users to see other user's comments and voting (promotions and deletions).

Many commentators are up in arms - some say the lack of an opt out is invasive, some that the search results are now cluttered which goes against the clean and clear characteristics they associate with Google's SERPs, others that users will not get what it is all about.

Each of these comments has some validity, but the underlying point is if you don't like it you can log out, so no biggy.

Implications for Search Engine Optimisation

As we said in our Online Marketing Trends for 2009 piece last month more user behaviour metrics will be applied to the Google algorithm - and SearchWiki forms part of this picture.

Qualitative User Behaviour Analysis

If you think about the data Google has been gathering to inform their knowledge of search behaviour (user click-through-rates and bounce rates etc) this data is quantitative - it tells Google what people are doing, but not necessarily why. Google's search engineers and analysts can of course interpret this data and allow it to inform their search results, but with some additional qualitative data any changes they implement are likely to enhance the user experience. SearchWiki helps bridge this user behaviour knowledge-gap by providing basic qualitative data.

• When a user promotes a search result Google know it is useful or liked
• When a user removes a search result Google know it is disliked or not useful

This sample data from the smaller percentage of logged-in users gives Google some basic qualitative data that they can use to inform the data they have. Google is sitting on a vast pile of user behaviour data in Google Analytics, and as stated are likely to have been recording search engine results page (SERP) behaviour for a while, measuring bounce rates, click-through-rates (CTR) and dwell time interactions. So when Google engineers combine this data picture the theory is that they should be able to infer which websites we find more useful and prefer, and Google can then overtime shift results to help promote this websites in their search algorithm.

User Comments - Semantic Analysis of Opinions

SearchWiki also allows users to add comments to search results. You might want to leave yourself a note to say this is great or rubbish, or what it contains - but realistically the value of this seems a bit limited as any website you feel is worthy of a comment is likely to be either promoted, removed or bookmarked so the comment becomes over-the-top. However, there are always people who will happily add their grist to the mill - so we expect comments will indeed be used.

Why would Google add this functionality? Being the altruistic organisation they are I'm sure you're thinking this is merely to enhance the user experience. However, we think that if SearchWiki is an exercise in gathering qualitative data, then indexing these comments for semantic evaluation of opinions (positive or pejorative feedback) would add further metrics to their knowledge of user behaviour and experience.

Black Hatters

The worry we already have is that this system could be abused by the ingenious and resourceful Black Hat SEOs who live to game the system and expolit opportunities they find to promote their commercial interests.

Black Hatters being resourceful folks will not find establishing mass Google Accounts too tricky. They will also not find spoofing IPs too tricky either. They will also not find writing scripts to promote their websites and remove competitor websites too challenging. Combine these three things together and you have a recipe for gaming the system.

Google need to be careful as abuse will undoubtedly happen. Careful analysis of user behaviour metrics will be required. If they allow direct linkage between the SearchWiki voting metrics and algorithmic outcome they might fall into the same trap as Direct Hit - which was severely undermined by the activities of many rogue SEOs.

Conclusion

On the whole we think SearchWiki will benefit users and help increase the relevance of higher quality and useful websites - but we think Google will need to be on its toes to ensure abuse does not get out of hand.