Almost a year after it was publicized the new human search engine Wikia Search is finally out at http://alpha.search.wikia.com/ . Hyped tremendously by Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, this new human powered search engine is believed to take on Google too. (Though I personally do not feel it is that powerful)
Wikia Search is based on the open source Nutch software which contains an index of web pages created by Grub (a company Wikia acquired last year). The search results at present are very meager and do not provide satisfactory answers. I believe the team really needs to work much harder behind the screens to really show some quality in these searches.
Also, not much of a human element is visible on the search engine at present. What users at present can do is add keywords to their profile - things that they are interested in, and would like to share resources with. When a search is conducted by anyone on those keywords, the user’s picture will appear in the right hand column. Much later when things will be smoother (hopefully) the user will be able to edit and improve results for searches they are interested in. Adding to this, Wikia search also allows users to contribute a “mini-article” on any topic that shall appear at the top of search results for queries posted by any person.
Wikia Search also acts as a social network where a user's profile includes basic things like photos, adding friends, interests and skills. Wikia Search profiles also have an activity stream (similar to facebook).
For all those who have been under clouds as to how the human powered search engine shall be able to rule out the leader in search engines, Google.Inc will have to wait for some more time until there are some miraculous changes in the existing form of Wikia Search.
Wikia Search is based on the open source Nutch software which contains an index of web pages created by Grub (a company Wikia acquired last year). The search results at present are very meager and do not provide satisfactory answers. I believe the team really needs to work much harder behind the screens to really show some quality in these searches.
Also, not much of a human element is visible on the search engine at present. What users at present can do is add keywords to their profile - things that they are interested in, and would like to share resources with. When a search is conducted by anyone on those keywords, the user’s picture will appear in the right hand column. Much later when things will be smoother (hopefully) the user will be able to edit and improve results for searches they are interested in. Adding to this, Wikia search also allows users to contribute a “mini-article” on any topic that shall appear at the top of search results for queries posted by any person.
Wikia Search also acts as a social network where a user's profile includes basic things like photos, adding friends, interests and skills. Wikia Search profiles also have an activity stream (similar to facebook).
For all those who have been under clouds as to how the human powered search engine shall be able to rule out the leader in search engines, Google.Inc will have to wait for some more time until there are some miraculous changes in the existing form of Wikia Search.
