Google Replaces Search Wiki with Stars
I’m guessing that Google Search Wiki never caught on. You have to be using the Google Toolbar, and I don’t. I don’t use Internet Explorer, and as apps go for monitoring SEO, I prefer to use the Firefox add-ons Search Status and SEO Quake. They just give more information.
In case you were never acquainted with Google Search Wiki, it was available to those who wanted to comment on websites as they surfed the Web. This was great for sites that people love, and gave some sites great feedback. They were dangerous for sites that had not so much traffic as say… Amazon… and got a bad review. One in five or ten is much more damaging than one in a hundred thousand, right? (See my post “SEO: Google Side Wiki: Why Should You Care?”
The stars are supposed to sync up with Google bookmarks, and they’re rather personal. For example, if I type in “list building” I get a bunch of stars at the top of my organic listings for sites I bookmarked: ListBuilding Club, Tellman’s ListBuilding Blog, my own blog, and so on. So, it’s a way to get your own bookmarked pages at the top of your search results. (yawn)
Here’s what Google says on the blog from March 3:
“We’ve long believed that personalization makes search more relevant and fun. For nearly five years, we’ve been tailoring results with personalized search. Today we’re announcing a new feature in search that makes it easier for you to mark and rediscover your favorite web content — stars.
The great thing about stars is that you don’t have to keep track of them. You don’t even have to remember whether or not you starred something. Simply perform a search and you’ll rediscover your starred items right when you need them. Stars sync with your Google Bookmarks and the Google Toolbar, so you can always see your list of starred items in one place and easily organize them. Even beyond the results page, while browsing the web you can quickly click the star icon in Toolbar to create a bookmark, and those pages will start showing up in the new stars feature.
“Stars in search replace SearchWiki. In our testing, we learned that people really liked the idea of marking a website for future reference, but they didn’t like changing the order of Google’s organic search results. With stars, we’ve created a lightweight and flexible way for people to mark and rediscover web content. For people who like annotations, we have Sidewiki, a more powerful way for people to contribute and discover helpful information next to pages across the Internet. All your existing SearchWiki edits will be preserved with your Google Account. You can learn more on our help center.”
But I know that I bookmarked my cat site right now and then searched, and bingo! There’s the star right at the top of my search results. Took less than 20 seconds. There will also be stars next to your site’s listings, if they’re warranted. If enough people bookmark your site, voila! Stars next to your rating.
I don’t see this as very influential and I’m not sure why Google went in this direction. If they’re showing me my own bookmarks when I search, so what? If they’re putting stars next to some listings and not others… hmm… won’t make much difference to me, and to those searchers who aren’t versed in the world of SEO or marketing, they probably won’t have a clue what they mean.
What do you think? Will the stars make a diff? Not much in my world, I’m thinking.
