Google Makes Major Interface Change To Search: SearchWiki


We’d noticed an increasing number of people emailing on a large-scale bucket test (a product change tested on just a percentage of total users) that Google has been conducting for months – adding a Digg-like voting feature to search results (which also changes the ranking) as well as user comments.

Tonight, Google apparently said “what the hell” and turned it on for everyone.

The changes are called SearchWiki, and are a dramatic departure from Google’s streamlined, algorithm-rules approach to search. It takes features from Digg to allow users to vote site results up or down, as well as features from Wikia Search to allow users to add comments, move search results, add search results, etc. The result are customized results that appear every time you do that search in the future (assuming you are logged in).

Here’s a demo video: