Possible Google Killer? You tell me

[galexcd 0]

I was reading about a revolutionary new search engine, using the idea that wikipedia uses: You can trust users give you results of what they want to see on the internet. This new search engine allows users to vote for every result of how relevant it is to your search query. There is also a mini wiki at the top of every search where users can add their own content on that search query. It is a very interesting approach to search engines. I'm sure you will see google and yahoo adopt some of the features in this one.

 

As of now, the ratings do not yet affect the results. I believe it is still in beta, or even still under development. As for the searches right now, it doesn't seem to get me the most relevant results, but I'm sure after they open the ratings, they will start to become better.

 

URL: http://answers.wikia.com/wiki/Wikianswers

[KansukeKojima 0]

Wow! This sounds like it'll be quite cool. I really like the design... the actual search results kind of remind me of google... as far as text formatting etc... but the whole design is mighty amazing....This will definately revolutionize search engines... user feedback that is. It is really quite a good idea, as most people searching a subject will generally search for the same type of information about the subject. I short, the average user may not have to scroll tonnes of google, msn, or yahoo pages to find what they want.

[tricky77puzzle 0]

Well, it also depends on how commonly the result is polled.If you're searching for something that isn't calvin-and-hobbes related on the word "zqfmgb", no one is going to look for that.Also, what ranking system does it use for relevance? Other than user review, that is... for the pages that aren't rated.

[darran 0]

This really sounds a like a potentially good competitor. When I use Google, I normally do not get the past the 2nd page of results because most of it are simply irrelevant to what I am looking for. When results get rated, I am actually quite intrigued as to how the whole system works, how does the engine determines what you rated is relevant to a particular search term?

[t3jem 0]

This sounds like a great idea; however, I could see some "googlebombs" coming from this or for this site "wikibombs", lol. Yea, but if google adopted this it would make it all that much better, but the voting system needs to be secure to prevent one person from killing all the search queries with his own website.

[galexcd 0]

This sounds like a great idea; however, I could see some "googlebombs" coming from this or for this site "wikibombs", lol. Yea, but if google adopted this it would make it all that much better, but the voting system needs to be secure to prevent one person from killing all the search queries with his own website.

Yes I was thinking about the exact same thing a while ago... Perhaps this is why the ratings aren't open yet. They most likely have a solution for it, it's just not ready for the public to use yet.

[suberatu 0]

Pretty interesting. While we're on the subject, there's another (relatively) new search engine I head about called accoona. It's based in China, and it is (to my knowledge) the ONLY search engine which uses actual AI (artificial intelligence) in giving you back search results. I was introduced to it by a substitute teacher at my school. It doesn't seem like to much now, but in the future the following may be the case:

 

Using a traditional search engine , a search for the terms cook the books will return the same as a search for cook books (ignoring the common article the.

 

A search using well-developed artificial intelligence however, will return results related to illegal financial activities by corporations and businesses (cook the books is slang for "A fraudulent activity done by some corporations to falsify their financial statements.")

 

User-rated searches on great and all, but I agree with t3jem's concern that numerous google-bombing type issues could (and most probably will) occur. Personally, I think that artificial intelligence is the new direction of search optimization.

[Forbez 0]

Looks very intresting. I searched for a few things, didn't actually find what I wanted though. I'll still be using ask.com for my searching though, hasn't change my mind at all. It's just a popularity contest. Site with the most vistors are top of the search list. I enjoy finding those hidden sites packed with relevant information.This isn't really my thing.

[etycto 0]

the idea seems like a great idea and the look is ok but kinda creepy because the logo looks like a smilling fart cloud it realy funny. i'd highly dout it's google killer but it's still in bata and anything can happen.

[csp4.0 1]

even though it may become very popular indeed google being so fast and still pretty accurate with their thousands of server farms and indexing supercomputers will still beat the wikia search. Wikia just doesn't have the computer power which google has to start off, it might take them what? 5 years? to get maybe one indexing superomputer and maybe five server farms.Even though I know that it is there, I would still use google, It's like then the M16 came out, it was an unreliable piece of plastic garbage but look at it now, just like with google, introducing newer more "accurate" weapons will only be met with some satisfaction but they bulk of the military still use weapons like the M16 and its children.So, even though wikia is wonderful as a not very accurate, not very trusted source as a encyclopaedia it will still not beat google if it turns search-engine...

[Absolute Zer0 0]

Sounds very innovative, I'll have to try this some time. Google DOES show some fairly irrelevant results from time to time, this might be a good solution.

[gameratheart 0]

I don't think it is possible for ANYTHING to kill Google, simply because it is well known, has a high reputation, and many people rely on their services. However, looking at this site I can see it's obvious merit, and I have to say it has the potential to become a close competitor. I would really like to see Google implement a rating system for their own search results - they can generate quite a lot of useless results sometimes and it would be good to have some human interaction involved in deciding the relevant ones...

Edited March 24, 2008 by gameratheart (see edit history)

[Absolute Zer0 0]

Well, yeah... I suppose that's like if a really nice Linux Distro came out and someone called it a Windows Killer, maybe it's good, but too many people already use windows, and wouldn't feel like switching to something else. HOWEVER, I do think Firefox has the potential to dominate IE sometime in the near future, it's already way better, so unless IE8 is a massive improvement on IE7... Yeah...

[Saint_Michael 3]

It sounds interesting but I think it is more work then it needs to be to make a good search engine. Granted google has made it more complicated then it should be with google rankings and all that other stuff, however, when I do wikipedia to look at stuff I am not to fond of their search methods just because your topic has to be really spefici and even if it you usually don't get results and so I think maybe combine the search engine method from this site to wiki to make it better. Although wiki and google made an exclusive deal just because you usually see wiki page in the first ten results, and besides all it is is a wikipedia clone with a better seach engine nothing more, but I guess it is a wait and see to see where this website goes.