Google introduced SearchWiki, a search results customization feature, to the public this week. Naturally, there are comparisons being made with Wikia Search, one of the original roll-your-own search machines.
So we ask: Which is best?
Google’s broad implementation of editing options is of course going to grab more eyes, and thus more interest, than Wikia Search. But let’s do a quick shootout among technical competitors, shall we? A little mano-a-mano for fans and opponents alike to consider, eh?
Google vs Wikia: The Visuals
Google SearchWiki - Google has a substantial leg up here. SearchWiki has had a largely seamless introduction, and the edit options are almost too easy to learn.
Wikia Search - It isn’t necessarily unattractive, but it’s considerably more complex. Which makes it a bit slower to operate.
How They Work
Google SearchWiki - Simply put, you have promotion and removal buttons to begin with, as well as a comment option to the right of the URL and ‘Similar Pages’ label.
If you choose to raise a link’s profile, it will be carried to the top of the results page. Removal will drop a link to the bottom of the page. Changes can be reversed, too, so nothing is definite.
Unfortunately, there is no quick option to rearrange a page as you like. Promos jump to the top. That’s the only path to take. Which you can familiarize yourself with, but it can still be tedious, particularly if you’re mapping your ideal Top 10-20 set of results for certain keywords.
Wikia Search - Apart from working with considerably less speed, there’s hardly anything to gripe about insofar as the engine’s toolset.
Hover your cursor over a search result and you’re shown a menu by which to edit, annotate, spotlight, comment, or delete whatever you see. You can star results from with a 1-5 rating, and you can even add a result if it’s missing from view.
User Friendliness
Google SearchWiki - Some might say SearchWiki is way ahead of Wikia in this department, but that’s not necessarily the case. We refer you to our “tedious” remark about having to customize a page’s results within the strict push-to-top and drop-to-bottom framework. It’s acceptable or annoying, depending on your level of patience and love for Mother Google.
Wikia - Give it a minute or two of your time, and you’ll find this one surprises with just how intuitive and powerful it can be - without becoming too detail-heavy. The abundance of tags at the top of the roster is welcome, and the Facebook-esque pop-up menu along the bottom of the window is nice to have. On-the-fly language specification is also something to appreciate.
And The Winner Is…
…it depends! It’s thoroughly difficult to be objective about these things, so we’ll leave it up to you to determine which engine is best. Google will command the discussions simply for its size and influence, so there’s no use thinking Wikia Search has a shot in a wide open one-on-one.
Yet Wikia is without doubt the more capable of the two when it comes to search results customization and annotation. There are just more stuff that a real power user would need. And let’s face it, the only search engine users that will bother combing results for their personal best-of list(s) are the power users among us. The ones that aren’t happy with how algorithms alone make keywords sing.
If you want to lend an engine a helping hand without care about brand loyalty and page count volume, Wikia Search is the place to go.
source: mashable.com
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