🪦 Google SearchWiki (2008-2010)

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Today I learned of Google SearchWiki, from a time when Google hosted their blog on Blogspot’s servers. It seemed like an interesting way of personalizing search. They even allowed you to re-rank results!

Google had a very different definition of what “a personal experience” meant 15 years ago.

Today we’re launching SearchWiki, a way for you to customize search by re-ranking, deleting, adding, and commenting on search results. With just a single click you can move the results you like to the top or add a new site. You can also write notes attached to a particular site and remove results that you don’t feel belong.

The changes you make only affect your own searches. But SearchWiki also is a great way to share your insights with other searchers. You can see how the community has collectively edited the search results by clicking on the “See all notes for this SearchWiki” link.

Google replaced this in 2010 with “Stars”:

With stars, you can simply click the star marker on any search result or map and the next time you perform a search, that item will appear in a special list right at the top of your results when relevant.

Even the Stars option is gone today. The most you can do is turn off your search history and tweak your autocomplete settings.

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I think if there was some way to tell Mojeek that I liked a particular site, and wanted it to boost it to the top of my results when it was in them, I would probably use it.

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I agree that a similar system could be helpful to Mojeek… but not necessarily as a way to personalize search results, which I don’t think Mojeek has the resources to do, nor do I want to live in an echo chamber. Rather, what I’m thinking is using such a system to provide a more meaningful feedback, as opposed to the current system of type-what-you-can-think.