You may have noticed that Google’s search results are a little different. If you have a gmail account, google adwords, google adsense, or google analytics account then most likely you are signed in under your account name when you go to Google’s home page.
If that is the case then Google has added a new feature to their search results. They call it Search Wiki. Google offers you the option of promoting or deleting search results. In other words if you do a search and find certain results to be more helpful than others, then you promote them to the top of your results.
Here is a snapshot of what it looks like:
I first noticed this when I was checking to see where a certain term was ranking for one of my websites. I saw that I could delete all of my competitors listings and promote mine to the top. What a great idea. Wrong. About a week later I was checking rankings again and low and behold and to my surprise my site was ranking #1 for my main term. I was so excited I gave my brother a high 5 and hugged my wife.
There was one problem, no increase in traffic. If anything, the traffic was lower than normal. So I checked rankings on another computer…there we were at number 6. I checked all of Google’s datacenters and each one showed us at #6. I had completely forgotten that I had “promoted” my site to the top position and now unless I sign out of my google account I can’t see where I actually rank.
So in conclusion, as fun as it might be to promote your own site to the top spot and delete out your competitors, it doesnt serve any purpose to do that and you won’t be able to check your true rankings anymore.
2 comments On Careful Using Google’s Searchwiki
ha! go ahead and get that ranked to #1 for real and Ill come up there to give you another high five. Hopefully I can fly the prosperly way!
I noticed that about 2 weeks ago and thought it looked like trouble for guys/gals like us. I suppose that Google might use this eventually as some kind of ingredient in its super secret formula for returning the best possible results. In fact, if enough people voted down a certain site for a term, Google might want to pay attention.
The problem with this is that I suppose someone would program robots to start voting down competing sites at a massive level. Someone is probably out there doing this now. Yes, we know what you are doing. Step away from the computer because Google is about to sink your battleship and you are not going to want to take out your frustrations on your computer. Google can spot a trend and you are busted mister!
OK, forget it. Google won’t use this input for anything, unless…