Proclaim!SEO Blog

Have you checked your Google search today?

Quite unexpectantly, and without much hurrah, Google has added a “Wiki” feature to it’s results.

My guess is that this is really more of a response to Jim Whales, the founder of Wikipedia, working on a Wikipedia style search engine, where the results are determined by searchers.

Even though the press on this happening is, well, almost nonexistent, it is, in my opinion, a HUGE happening!  But before I tell you why it’s huge, lets look at what they’ve done.

The first thing you may notice is that, well, it’s not very noticable.  Google has placed three small, translucent symbols next to the results.  The first two really allow you to do one amazing thing…you may now get your listing to the top of Google results with one click!  Just click on the up arrow.  Of course, it only places the listing at the top of YOUR Google search, and the corresponding “x” will place the listing back in it’s Google determined order.  The second, and more significant feature is the “call out” symbol.  This feature allows you to make a PUBLIC comment on the listing.  For example, if your site is www.mywidgets.com, I can place a comment of “mywidgets.com sucks. They never give you what you order.” and it will appear below the listing for all the world to see.  Or, you could say how pleased you are.

And here lies the problem…what’s to stop me, Mr. SEO, from giving RAVE reviews to all of my clients, and for that matter, what’s to stop me from dissing all of their competition?  Or, wait, I think I have some Viagra to sell…maybe I’ll advertise it on your listing comments. See the problem?

I haven’t seen instructions by Google on their new feature.  Will other users be able to delete my comments? Will users be able to delete spam?  Will the comments have any value at all, since you won’t really know the users intent? (this is why I give user review sites so little value).  Will I be able to hire some Chinese company to create a thousand user accounts and make positive comments for my clients?

Geeze…this just looks like a big headache for Google.  And if it works, it will, no doubt, create more job security for us SEO guys, as someone is going to need to feed your comments.

But lets not get too excited about the feature. Google has stated on many occasions that it’s operating model is to create a product, place it out there, and let the public tell it what to do.  I’m guessing we tell Google to put this feature back on the shelf.  But, hey, I thought blogs were a stupid idea…