With the recent announcement from Google of the imminent release of SearchWiki, which allows user customisation of Google search results, we've heard a lot of flap about the possible demise of the web marketing Industry... after all, if Joe Public can choose what he sees in his search results, then surely all our hard won placements are 'up the spout?'
SearchWiki is explained in this short video from Google on YouTube, found here and shown below for your convenience.
When signed in this new feature of the Google account allows users to not only add, but delete and modify search results at will. This all sounds great (and to be honest, as it allows you to delete completely irrelevant results from your searches, I think everyone will agree probably a good thing!) but I can see why the gathering of this sort of data by Google is disconcerting to a lot of people in the seo industry.
Personally, I tend to agree with Ian McIntosh in his article yesterday which suggests that the use of this type of data by Google is at an early stage, and adoption is neither guaranteed or imminent. But then again...
Did anyone see the news article on the BBC last week about a very bubbly young woman from Tyneside who has taken YouTube by storm with her series of make-up tips? The point is, viral videos like this drive search results, and you can be damn sure that if this particular youTube reference didn't come up in a search for 'make-up tips' in Google, with widespread adoption of SearchWiki there would soon be plenty of data streaming through Google accounts world wide to say it should be.
Seems to me that as the overtly viral nature of online communities continue to push the boundaries of knowledge sharing so the continuing success of Google (and for that matter any online business) will be dependant upon this information, and that's exactly what SearchWiki has been developed to address, the only thing is, has Google got it all wrong? Will anyone actually bother to re-arrange search results? Does anyone really have the time (or the inclination) to help out poor old Google with some more data to feed the algorithm dev department? Probably not!
Google probably does care what it's users want included in search results and rightly so... but this particular seo bod thinks it may all be a HUGE waste of time and effort given human nature as it is!
Have your say...