Gulo Customized Internet Solutions

Open Search

In the March edition of ALA Techsource's Smart Libraries Newsletter, I just read a little piece by Tom Peters about “Search Wikia.” This is a project-apparently announced in late December 2006-sounds like it is going to try and take on Google and other major search engines. The approach:

Wales believes that relevancy-ranking algorithms cannot do as good a job of judging relevance as can a large group of users applying their human discernment and judgment to search results. If a system to harness, analyze, and present the evolving wisdom of the crowd could be developed, relevancy-ranking algorithms could face some stiff competition.

Noted on their website this project is very different from the wiki search project Wikiseek.

What improved value will come of a user generated algorithm vs. the coveted proprietary "PageRank"? Will a user contribute search will be less partial and intrinsically more valuable? While this approach to search is very intriguing, I can't even begin to imagine what an interface would look like.