Wikia Built to destroy Google

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January 18th, 2008 by Geoff

Is Wikipedia about to knock Google off the top of the search engine tree? On the 7th January 2008, Wikipedia has launched it's own search engine Wikia, most likely in response to Google's diversification with Google Knol. But, how is Wikia going to get people to use it?

The relevance of the results is what is going to make people use Wikia more, in addition to the fact that it is linked with a well known and well used site. Social Media sites such as Facebook and MySpace, who have such a huge user base, have the opportunity to be successful. The only thing is they need to produce a search engine that produces the same quality of search results that Google does.

Wikipedia has a huge user base. Wiki or Wikipedia is one of the top ten searches online each year so proves that it has a huge usage. If people automatically had Wikipedia as their default homepage instead of one of the other search engines then they wouldn’t need to use Google. What Wikipedia need is a really good search engine and people would stick with it, otherwise they will go back to Google to get more relevant results.

It is a great idea by Wikipedia because not only will the end user be able to have a whole database of knowledge at the click of a mouse but also be able to access a really relevant search engine. Check this out for an idea; if Jimmy Wales was to launch a social media section in addition to a successful search engine then I am convinced there would be no way back for Google. Mark my words – if (or should I say when) Jimmy Wales becomes richer than the Google founders, then I want some credit.

However, at the moment the results can only honestly be described as a load of tat. Try a search for something in your industry and notice the basic mistakes in the results that it gives back. I searched ‘pay per click’ and here are the mistakes that I found:
1. The results aren’t tailored to the country that the searcher is in. The second result that came back is for a company in the Netherlands with the website in Dutch – how is this relevant to me when I only speak English?
2. The third result that comes back is Israeli and written in Israeli. Again, how is this relevant to me in the UK?
3. Same again, fourth result is from Australia and there are further results from America, which are quite as bad because the language is English, but the contact details are in the country so not very relevant to me in the UK.
4. Conflict with Google – Google sources a lot of search results from Wikipedia. Is there now a conflict between Google and Wiki because both parties are branching out into each other’s fields? Google launching Knol and Wiki launching Wikia will be an interesting battle. Watch this space.
5. Lastly, Click Consult weren’t in the top 10 – there must be something seriously wrong…..

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