Google recently released a tool that puts you in the drivers seat when it comes to searching on their site, SearchWIKI. SearchWIKI allows you to customize your search results so you can ‘promote’ listings to the top where they are easier to find.

From the Google Blog

Have you ever wanted to mark up Google search results? Maybe you’re an avid hiker and the trail map site you always go to is in the 4th or 5th position and you want to move it to the top. Or perhaps it’s not there at all and you’d like to add it. Or maybe you’d like to add some notes about what you found on that site and why you thought it was useful.

Let’s break it down;

I did a search for SearchWIKI and got the following results:

Hovering my mouse over an arrow on the right of a listing I am given the option to promote it to the top if I want

Once I promote it Google sends it to the top of the natural or organic search results

Google denotes this with a green arrow. Promote the wrong listing? Just click the down arrow and it will return to it’s normal position.

It doesn’t stop there though. If you want to leave yourself a note on why you like this listing you can leave yourself comments which are kept in your SearchWIKI activity(must be signed into Google).

Google allows you to keep track of all your SearchWIKI activity and to see other peoples activity on any given search result

You can also remove sites from search results by simply clicking on the X beside the arrow. Want to add a result? Simply click on the ‘Add a result’ link to add a site to this page.

This is an interesting feature that can help you tailor your search results to fit your needs, allowing you to promote listings that you regularly visit, remove sites you don’t like and add sites that didn’t make the cut.

SearchWIKI – “Will This Hurt My Business?"

As a business owner or advertiser this doesn’t mean that regular people now have control over Google’s search results, this function manipulates only the search results of that user and in no way will increase or decrease your listing in Google. This also does not affect Google’s AdWord or PPC advertising in anyway.

SearchWIKI – Your New Online PR Tool

Even though this tool will not affect your website rankings in anyway you can however monitor your site listing and see if anyone has commented on it. Check to see if you have any positive or negative feedback and act accordingly.

As this is a new function comments are pretty limited but this is a good tool to measure your online PR.

SearchWIKI – Sign Us Up

Overall it’s a pretty interesting idea that gives the end user a little more flexibility in what they want to see and ultimately share with others. It should be an interesting concept to visit in a year to see how it went

Google Explains SearchWIKI

Jason McElweenie

For more information please contact the Search Engine Marketing Team at Schipul – sem@schipul.com