Analysis: Will Wikia Search ever compete?

In Wales' defence, he did point out at the launch that the
community-oriented search engine was "like fine wine, in that it will
get better and better as time goes by and more and more people
contribute". That's because the search engine relies on user input -
whether that's creating mini-articles on topics users search for, or
rating results to make keyword searches more relevant.

The first feature carries definite overtones of Wales' other project,
Wikipedia - although Wikipedia is owned by the not-for-profit
organisation Wikimedia Foundation. Wikia Search, however, is a
commercial venture from Wikia Inc - although the two are similar in that
people will be able to edit and comment on these mini-articles. But
Wikia Search combines this with several social networking features.

Users can share photos, add friends and detail their hobbies, as well as
edit their own profiles. In Facebook-style, their friends can also see
what they've been up to via the activity log and post messages on the
white board. So Wikia Search is something of a hybrid of a social
networking site and search engine.

Like other search engines, it uses an algorithm to generate results
using technologies that crawl and index the web. But as the search
engine gains momentum and more users start to rate sites based on the
accuracy and relevance to their search keywords, user ratings will be
incorporated into the search algorithm. This means that popular sites
could secure a high place in the results even if they're not
particularly well-known or an obvious contender for the number-one
spot.

Whither innovation

In one sense, this is no different to how the pay-per-click (PPC) model
works, argues Chrysi Philalithes, vice-president global marketing and
communications at Miva. "Many PPC engines use yield-based ranking, where
one of the factors that determines where a PPC ad appears in search
results is how many times an ad is clicked on," she says.

At the moment, user ratings are based on a five-star system, and users
allocate a score based on how relevant they think the site is. But Wales
says the way results appear to users and also how much user ratings
influence search results are still being refined. Over time, Wikia plans
to build on the community features further, by adding social bookmarking
tools, so that users can share URLs easily, "and it will generate good
data on which websites people find popular," adds Wales.

The success of review sites, such as TripAdvisor, not to mention
feedback features on Amazon and eBay, suggests that users generally
trust what other users say. They trust even more what their own circles
of friends on social networks such as Facebook have to say, and this is
where Wikia Search could prove to be really powerful. "If you ask
consumers where they go for research before they buy a product, in their
top two or three answers will be friends and family, and a search
engine," says Stephanie Carr, managing director of search engine
marketing agency The Search Works. Wikia Search combines both.

One of Wikia Search's distinguishing features is its open-source
infrastructure. While the big three search engines - Google, Yahoo! and
Microsoft - view their search algorithms as commercial secrets, the
technology behind Wikia Search is completely open to software developers
and can be modified or adapted by anyone with programming knowledge.
"I've said before that internet search must be more open and
transparent, and today marks a major milestone in our mission to make it
just that," announced Wales at the launch of Wikia Search.

That said, it's this same openness and transparency that many agencies
and marketers believe will make Wikia Search a target for spammers and
organisations that want to manipulate ratings to boost their site's
ranking in the search results.

"A lot of black hat guys would love something like Wikia Search to
become a success because they'd have a field day in playing that social
algorithm," claims Nilhan Jayasinghe, head of natural search at search
agency Spannerworks.

But Wales insists any spammers or hackers will suffer short shrift.
"It's possible people might try to manipulate results, but we'd ban
them," he says. He also believes that having a body of users rating
search results will soon separate trusted from mistrusted sources. It's
an argument that carries some weight. Walid Al Saqqaf, founder of
restaurant and bars reviews site TrustedPlaces, believes its user base
forms his site's first line of defence. "If a place has numerous reviews
- whether negative or positive - from a member that has not given much
information or contributed elsewhere, the community will flag them up as
someone trying to beat the system," he says.

Community service

But the difference between the two sites is that TrustedPlaces already
has a thriving community and Wikia Search doesn't. Nor does Jayasinghe
think it will easily acquire one.

"Google's success is really about scalability, which is a huge, huge
task," he says. "At the moment, Wikia Search is just not useful enough
for anyone to use it and provide the user input. If you started with the
relevancy that Google has and then asked people to add (their ratings),
then I'm naturally going to use it because it has the relevancy and
gives me this extra information. But I honestly think people aren't
going to put the time in (with Wikia Search)."

Wikia acknowledges that the search experience on Wikia Search is
currently poor; in the 'about us' section on the site, it states: "We
are aware that the quality of the search results is low." But in a
comment posted in response to Arrington's post on TechCrunch, Wales
justified the performance of Wikia Search by saying: "It's a project to
build a search engine, not a search engine."

He also made it clear at the launch of Wikia Search that it was only an
'alpha' release, so there are bound to be some glitches. "We expect it
to be a minimum of two years before we have industry-standard quality
search," he adds.

Philalithes, for one, admires Wales' candour. "What I thought was
impressive was the honesty of the brand - on its front page it basically
states that this product is in development and will require users' help
to get optimal results. I found that very refreshing, and it also made
it very inclusive," she says.

But there's no denying the uphill struggle Wikia Search faces. Although
Lucy Allen, managing director of Netrank, thinks Wikia Search has a
future, she worries that user ratings will be limited to popular search
terms. "Where Wikia Search will struggle is in the long tail and the
more obscure search terms," she says.

One also has to question how long it will take Wikia Search to build up
a viable community of users to start delivering useful search results.
"Even though Wales himself said, 'don't expect to log on to this site on
day one and get a Google-type experience', the problem is you might log
on in five years time and still not get a Google-type experience," warns
Paul Mead, managing director of VCCP Search.

It's not as if the other search engines have been standing still either;
Google and Yahoo!, in particular, have been actively pursuing social
search opportunities. Google has created iGoogle, a personalised search
engine that draws on a user's previous search histories to improve the
relevancy of search results; Google Co-op, a customised version of
Google, lets users rate relevant sites under different topics and add
specific URLs in the search results; and, in December, it announced its
Knol project.

A knol is defined by Google as "a unit of knowledge" and although not
public yet, knols sound rather like the mini-articles that appear on
Wikia Search, insofar as they feature content written by users (the aim
is to start with articles written by authors and experts). People will
be able to give feedback and, in a move that could have repercussions
for Wikipedia, knols will feature in Google search results, where
relevant.

Personalising search

Yahoo! has also been active in the area of personalised and social
search.

"We see search moving from a purely keyword-based medium to an
environment that is more social and contextual," says Jeff Revoy,
European vice-president of Yahoo! search and social media. "We believe
social search delivers a more comprehensive and satisfying search
experience by complementing algorithmic web search with these human
insights." An example of this is Yahoo! Answers, a knowledge-sharing
community that allows people to share knowledge, experiences and
opinions on a number of topics by posting and answering questions.

There are other smaller search engines too - such as Mahalo - which rely
on human beings to improve the relevancy of results. But these also have
nowhere near the traction of the big three search engines. Nathan Levi,
head of search at digital agency Avenue A Razorfish, sums it up: "Google
has desktop search, the Google taskbar and so many free applications
that users keep coming back. So the argument about whether Wikia Search
will catch up is redundant to start, as Google is completely
unique."

Perhaps rather ironically, Google had this response when asked to
comment on this article: "Search is a highly competitive industry and we
welcome competition, which stimulates innovation and provides users with
more choice."

Putting issues of size aside, Ed Foster, head of search for EMEA at
Universal McCann, is unsure of the money-making potential behind social
search engines. "I doubt Yahoo! makes a whole lot of money out of Yahoo!
Answers - certainly they make more from paid search and use that to
drive volumes - it does add to the user experience," he concedes.
"However, would a company want to do nothing else but an answers
service? I don't know where the revenue is going to come from."

Wales provides some enlightenment when outlining his future vision for
the search engine. "There is a vague plan to do advertising around
search - something similar to Google paid search," he reveals. There are
also plans to add search functionality for different media - such as
video and blogs - although he concedes news sites will probably be the
first addition, "as it is reasonably straightforward", he explains.

Whether Wikia Search will be a Google killer or a Google victim remains
to be seen, but there's a general consensus in the market that the
concept of social search, which Wikia Search embraces, has long-term
potential. "I'm a strong believer in people and communities determining
relevancy on the internet, so if they can build an exceptional
community, there is every possible chance that the Wikia Search results
could be more qualified than Google. If this happens, they will attract
a good chunk of my paid search and SEO attention," says Andrew Hunter,
head of marketing at Qype, a reviews site with more than two million
unique users each month.

The rising number of natural search results that incorporate social
networking sites, such as MySpace and YouTube, is already having
repercussions for the search engine marketing industry. Many now refer
to reputation management instead of search engine optimisation (SEO),
for instance, and the challenge for advertisers is monitoring what is
happening to their brand both in those areas they can control (their
website, paid search keywords and so on) and those they can't (blogs,
videos and social networking sites).

"The ability for users to create and edit articles on Wikia Search is
obviously an issue - however, the online environment is constantly
evolving and brands have to accept that internet users can and will
share their views," points out Richard Clark, marketing manager for DSG
International, which owns the Dixons and PC World brands.

Whether that will be on Wikia Search or another site is uncertain, but
there's no doubt that the hunger for user participation online is
pushing the search market into new, uncharted waters and ensuring it
remains a market to watch in 2008.