Taking another stride toward the personalized search model that many consider to be the next wave of search, Google released its SearchWiki product last week. This essentially allows people to alter and comment upon search results to suit their taste.
Google makes it a point to clearly state that edits will only affect your personal results and not affect anyone else's, but it's hard to imagine them *not* using the user generated data in some way. It's the holy grail really, to let the users help refine the algorithm and downvote SPAM. The obvious problem is that spammers will surely vote as well - probably on a grand botnet-powered scale - which might be reason they're so quick to claim the votes won't affect the rankings.
This is yet more evidence that search is social media. Search was rightly hyped up a few years back, though the vast majority of the hype focused on the direct response value of the platform. Users click ads, convert, profit.
Now the hype surrounds social media, and search is often left out of the picture. Digg, Facebook, Twitter, etc. are the new cool kids of the web. But with or without voting and comments, search is still the connective tissue that holds the web together, and its influence shouldn't be overlooked.
I had a little trouble understanding at first, but I'm pretty sure I understand what meant now. Ta!