GermWorks - Web Design & Life

Have not read much about this yet but basically its the NEW search engine from the creators of Wikipedia, the difference between this and the major search engine Google is that it is humans and not complex computer algorithms that decide what the best and relative websites are.

• Web Credible -The convergence of usability and SEO?
• Wikia - Welcome to Search Wikia
• Wired News - Giving Search a Human Touch

Web credible in their article seem a little worried about the SEO guys who charge $3, 000 odd a day but I do not think they will loose their jobs, maybe loose the high price but not their importance. From what I gather usability is going to be very important in the new Wikia Search so maybe designers, coders and usability testers importance will rise.

In looking and having a quick compare at Wikia Search and Google, this is what I found;

• Wikia has the obvious Wikipedia style.
• Google has the ‘blurb’ or description under each search.
• Wikia instead displays other details like page titles and were in the file it contains the searched word(s).
• Wikia does not tell the user what the page is about.

In doing a simple test on a generic phrase of “search engine” I received interesting results. Googles search came up with several search engines like msn, alta vista (anyone remember that), dog pile and of course google (which was not top). Wikia’s search came up with Wikia first and then Google. Windows Live was number one in Google and number seven in Wikia.

What does this all mean? Well i dont know to be honest, I do know a little bit about SEO but I am not an expert so it should be interesting to see what peoples reactions are.

I think the human touch is a good idea but it could dangerous as they could become biased. Its harder for a computer to be biased . I think Wikia really needs to however fix up their landing page, I prefer Google’s clean layout. Wikia’s logo also sucks. However it should be interesting to see a new company keep Google on their toes and maybe even improve. Competition is always good….

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