Have you ever searched with Google, and known a site or found a site you thought should be at the top of results? Well with Google’s newest feature, for users with a Google account, you can now make those changes. The new feature is known as Google Search Wiki. The name of the product is not really indicative of what it can do. Basically, when logged in, you can vote up or down a link as you see fit, and add comments which will become pulic (see image-click to enlarge). When you are logged out of your account, you will not have access to the Google Search Wiki tool or data.

Released late November, Google’s Search Wiki has been the source of some misconceptions and controversies. As of right now, the  changes you make only affect your own searches.  We are sure, however, in the future that this information will be used. It would hard to believe that if a wide selection of geographical diverse people up-voting a link, would not have an impact on results. More than anything, we wanted to write about this new feature to warn of some shady SEO peddlers using this tool to their advantage and to steal money. You should always do a  searched signed out of a Google account to get a good feeling of any SEO program. To tell if you (or anyone) is signed in, look at the top left of the page. All you should see is a “Sign In” link, and nothing more. Searching this way is the only way to ensure you get the results other users will when searching for your keywords.

One other issue or potential issue is that all comments made about a site are public. Therefore, a user could add a comment about your site or domain which might be harmful to your brand. Thankfully you can flag a comment as inappropriate, although we are unsure how that is handled by Google. Also, there is no way to be notified when new comments are added, so you should check occasionally to make sure there is nothing untoward being written about your site. To do so, when logged into your Google Account, click “See all notes for this SearchWiki”, at the bottom of the page. You will then see under the search engine entry the number of comments, click on that, and you will see them all.

To read about all the SearchWiki features read the official SearchWiki Google Page. You can also check out the official SearchWiki video from Google below: