Is Google SearchWiki Game-able?

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

One Twitter user recently said Google SearchWiki seems “game-able.” I’m not sure what he means by that. Simply put, it’s a way for Google Personal Search users to customize their own results. You have to be signed in to your account to use it, but you can move individual results to the top of the search results for any given search query, delete results you don’t like, make notes on results, and see the notes that other users make to the Search Wiki.

Those of us who make our living in search have been looking for this level of customization for some time. I don’t know that we necessarily expected to roll out as a wiki, but I like the streamlined way you can just move things around on the search results page. Since no one else can see the changes you make to your own search results, it may seem that SearchWiki has no practical marketing applications. But you’d be wrong.

Down at the bottom of your search results page, you’ll see three links:

• Add a result
• See all my SearchWiki notes
• See all notes for this SearchWiki

Again, no one else will be able to see any results you add to the search results page. That’s your customization. Ah, but that third link – take a look at it. You can actually see the notes that other people make for a particular search results page. And that’s where the “game-ability” comes in.

Anyone not logged into their personal accounts will not be able to see the notes you make to the search results for a particular SearchWiki, but anyone who is logged into their accounts, if they view a particular search result on a query they make, will be able to see the notes that you make. They just have to click that third link at the bottom of the search results page. Unfortunately, public notes don’t show up immediately.

But here’s how you can use SearchWiki to market your website. Make a search query for a key term that you know you rank for. Click on the notes icon next to your listing and make a note about it. Then save the note as a public comment. Other SearchWiki users will be able to see your comment when they make the same search query.

Taking a popular search query – “SEO” – and clicking on that bottom link, we can see that there are already notes for some of the search queries. SEOBook.com has 18 comments. SEOmoz has 3 comments. MattCutts.com has 12 comments. I can also see that 39 people moved SEOBook to the top of the search results and 2 people deleted it from the search results. If I click on the 18 comments, I can see who made those comments. I also have the ability to “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” each comment in the SearchWiki.

Scrolling down, here are some of the comments that I saw:

Comment by: Searcher, Jul 15 – searching: seobook
“What is going on with this poof it’s gone, promote thing! WOW”

Comment by: Alexander Popa, Nov 22 – searching: seo
“Aaron for President.”

Comment by: Searcher, Nov 21 – searching: seo
“hjkhl”

These comments are likely from Internet marketers testing the new SearchWiki to see how it can be gamed. All one need do to game the SearchWiki system is create a bunch of personalized accounts at Google and make a lot of public comments to give the impression that you have a lot of people who support you or believe in what you are doing. I hope that Google figures out a solution for killing that.