Wikia Search: Is It Unique Enough To Compete?

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Monday, 7 of January , 2008 at 1:49 pm

This morning I talked about the new Wikia Search search engine. What I didn’t discuss is the real benefit of being included in a search engine’s database. If Wikia is to be successful then it must meet the minimum benefit requirements for search engines and that means providing webmasters as well as searchers with benefits - not just searchers only.

Google does this well and that’s why it’s the No. 1 search engine. Google first gained a reputation by beating all the other search engines in providing relevant results for search queries. But it also grew in stature by providing webmasters with useful tools and benefits as well. Some of those benefits include:

• Link-Building Based Algorithm
• Webmaster Tools
• Vertical Search Categories
• Advertising Products
• Ancillary Products like Blogspot.com, Pikasa, YouTube, etc.
• SEO Awareness

Many of the benefits that Google has provided to webmasters have been intangible, but the tangible benefits should not go unmentioned. The Google toolbar with the PageRank tool has been invaluable to many a webmaster. Every webmaster knows that you can use certain Google tools and services to improve their websites and increase their rankings, not only at Google but at the other search engines as well. Google AdWords’ free keyword research tool has proven to be tremendously helpful to helping webmasters improve their organic listings as well as their pay per click ads.

Yahoo! and MSN have also included tools and benefits for webmasters. Ask.com was one of the first search engines to get in on the local search game by providing searchers with a platform for making local searchers through its vertical search tool AskCity. All the search engines now provide a similar service.

It really doesn’t do to call these search providers search engines any more. They are really search portals. All of them to some degree provide searchers and webmasters with benefits outside of the range of organic search. If Wikia Search is going to enter the search field and compete on a respectable level then it must able to leverage its search tools with other products and services that provide benefits to searchers and webmasters, but it must do so in a way that gives it an advantage over the existing search portals. That means, it must define its uniqueness. Is being open source and user-generated going to be enough to satisfy that requirement? Only time will tell.

Category: SEO, SEO Tools, Search Engines, Search Marketing

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