Google SearchWiki: BYOSR (Bring your own search results)

The folks at Google always seem to have something new in the works, and as usual, their current experiment could have some serious potential. I'm not talking about their employee zip line, that little project had potential from day one. That's one beta test I wish I had been invited to.

No, the newest (one of many, no doubt) experiment, called Google SearchWiki involves users customizing their own search results.



Before everyone gets all Google-y eyed about the news, let me make it known that it is only available to a small number of lab rats, randomly selected. But let's be honest, is anything Google does really random?

So the test feature is all about user intervention and customization. After you type in your desired search terms you can choose which results really reflect what you're looking for. Let's say you're really looking for the musical duo Ann and Nancy Wilson when you type in "Heart". You can choose to reorder the results so that you get fewer links to heart surgeons and, uh, career.com? Or remove the listing completely. (Other oft hard to find musical sensations include Bread, The Scorpions, Chicago, and Rod Stewart for some strange reason.)

Or perhaps you want a certain site to be included. What if I want TopTenREVIEWS' blog page to come up when I search for "coolest site on Planet Earth"? You can add your own suggested site, complete with comment. Other participants can see your suggestions. Somehow I foresee SearchWiki being an overblown marketing tool whenever this thing goes live. Then again, what isn't a marketing tool on the internet these days.

Maybe this technology can simply be used like Pandora for searching. Though, I'm not sure I want to know what other people are really searching for. How did you guys find this blog anyway?

So if you haven't been selected to participate in the experiment you can:

• Try a plug in from SurfCanyon to personalize your internet searches


• Live vicariously through Justin Hileman


• See the Google Edit search results FAQ, sorry, no comic book this time.


• Read some more blogs from the coolest site on Planet Earth:

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