pocketrockets

Good! they need some competition!

Wikipedia founder says to challenge Google, Yahoo

Thursday March 8, 10:00 am ET TOKYO (Reuters) - The on-line collaboration responsible for Wikipedia plans to build a search engine to rival those of Google Inc. (NasdaqGS:GOOG - News) and Yahoo Inc. (NasdaqGS:YHOO - News), the founder of the popular Internet encyclopaedia said on Thursday. Wikia Inc., the commercial counterpart to the non-profit Wikipedia, is aiming to take as much as 5 percent of the lucrative Internet search market, Jimmy Wales said at a news conference in Tokyo.

"The idea that Google has some edge because they've got super-duper rocket scientists may be a little antiquated now," he said.
Describing the two Internet firms as "black boxes" that won't disclose how they rank search results, Wales said collaborative search technology could transform the power structure of the Internet.

Wales, a former futures trader who has become an evangelist for the free sharing of technology, said users could work together to improve search engines, just as Wikipedia users had tweaked and rewritten articles on the sprawling encyclopaedia.

The process of constant improvement would also make search technology less susceptible to spam, he said.
Founded in 2004 and now employing a staff of more than 30, Wikia hosts group publishing sites on a wide range of topics from psychology to the Muppets.

While Wikia gives away its tools free to users, the company requires that sites built with its resources link to Wikia.com, which makes money through advertising.

Using the same root software as Wikipedia, Wikia is likely eventually to carry more articles than its counterpart, Wales said.
Unlike the encyclopaedia, much of Wikia's content is geared toward niche markets -- a boon for readers obsessed with topics such as Star Wars films or trains.

Wikipedia currently has nearly 1.7 million articles in English alone, according to its Internet site.

While Wales declined to give any earnings targets, he said the company had received a $4 million investment from "angel investors" as well as a "very large investment" from Amazon Inc. (NasdaqGS:AMZN - News).



Wikipedia founder says to challenge Google, Yahoo: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

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emp

This man knows SHIT about Search Engines.

It is very easy to build a bad / hard to build a mediocre search engine.

Trust me, I know.

"Users will help" Yeah, right. The first few months (and after) they'll find ways to game your little engine for all it's worth. Especially if this thing starts with a decent size... and we#re talking the works: Recommendation Networks (digg, reddit, stumbelupon, anyone?), script kiddies, guru hackers, fake admins, SEO optimized sites, cloaking, etc..

Planning to make the ranking open? A SEO dream come true.

After that, is he planning on letting people play with the ranking algorithm itself?
Ha, have fun with that. Ranking algos are a complex lot consisting of dozens of variables. Anyone ever play around with one? You turn one little variable a tiny fraction, you're tearing down the house.

After all that, maybe it'll work out fine and kill google and Yahoo for good.



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Apple D

he doesn't stand a chance against yahoo and Google. At best wikipedia will be a niche search engine. Even Ask.com with the power of interactive corp behind it can't get more than 3% of the market.

Aequitas

A little more information can be found out about this on another thread located right about here.

Just gives you another source to check out.

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Aequitas

You do realize that Wikipedia the non-profit corp has already overran Google, that is something no one thought was possible, ever start to notice the increase of top 10 searchs, the wikipedia articles are usually all in the top 10 now.

As for them not being able to rival, well yeah they would have to prove a heck of a lot to come close to taking down Google but don't be so quick to underestimate them, they've pulled out some pretty big shit in the past.

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Apple D

Yea but there is a world of difference between an ancyclopedia and an entire search engine. And the success fo wikipedia won't translate into search engine success. People who want to find websites use google and wont use a wikipedia search engine. Wikipedia simply serves information.

Also search engines have to have confidential, requently changing algos or spammers will render them useless. I don't see how the wikipedia search engine can succeed with transparent ranking factors.

Aequitas

The wikipedia search engine will actually be coming from wiki.com, the corporate profile of the non-profit wikipedia, so the encyclopedia doesn't really have anything to do with it, other then I'm sure they'll have super high rankings in their engine.

Its the point that wiki and the founder of all of this is probably one of the few who could create something this big, like I said when he first started out on this adventure of his, not many people thought he would pull it off but he did.

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pocketrockets

Exactly! Emp and Apple, did you guys even read the article?? They are aiming for 5% of the market...of course they aren't going to be able to overtake Google and Yahoo anytime soon if ever at all. That's obvious.

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emp

Wow... did you even read my reply?

Never said it's impossible to get market share.

I just critiqued the way they are going to do it and predicted they are going to get games like there is no tomorrow.

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Aequitas

emp,

Does that stand for Electro Magnetic Pulse?

Anyway I actually agree with your post, I do believe they will get some sort of games pulled over their eyes, they want to make the search engine user generated, kind of like the way users can post wikipedia articles.

Now they say this will cut down on spam and I say yes they are right but they will not be able to keep a level playing field like Google does, well Google doesn't have a perfect level playing field we all know that but if this new wiki engine allows their users to learn a lot about how they index the web then SEOs are going to be able to score #1 rankings with little work.

Hence the reason why Google is so secretive about their algorithms.

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emp

Well, one thing you have to ask is about motivation.

Who is interested in a SPAM-free search engine? A lot of people. Willing to work for it? Less than that. Willing to work for it without pay? Hmmmm.... Willing to work on it without pay continuously as spam evolves? Oh welll.....

Who is interested in gamin a new search engine? Wellll.........



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mattinator

I think this is great because it will probably give a lot of insight as to how google and yahoo's algorithms work. As wiki adjusts and starts to try and rank pages maybe we'll start to get a clearer picture. I'll definitely have my eye on it.

Aequitas

I agree its definatly something that I'll be keeping my eye on as well, even if they don't come close to the big 3 search engines, if they can provide a decent amount of traffic for one of my sites, I'll be hacking it haha.

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Apple D

The real rpoblem is it simply wont get traffic. Ask,.com only has 3% of the search market but its been around since 1998 and has the backings of Interactive Corp, a multibillion dollar company. There is no way it will get even .5%.

Aequitas

haha your fucking stupid why haven't you been banned yet, I'm getting a hold of Jon if your still around here tomorrow.

Second you cannot say for sure that they will not succeed, the guy that runs this thing isn't some dumb fuck, he's got backing just like anyone else plus he's responsible for having a page in almost every search on Google, like I said if anyone can get into the search engine market its going to be him, and last your comparing the FUCKING wiki foundation to ask.com.

I mean seriously yeah ask.com has been around for that long but that doesn't mean shit, they don't do fuck all, the wiki foundation has done a million better things to get them millions more visitors then ask.com ever does.

With that said I'm not saying they WILL get in I'm simply saying its dumb to ignore something that has POTENTIAL.

Learn to open your eye's a little bit so you can be prepared to cash in on something before everyone else. Its called INSPIRATION.

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GeorgeB

Except wikipedia gets all their traffic from ranking #1 in Google for EVERYTHING.

It'll be interesting to see how it affects Google's algorithm when they start taking wikipedia seriously and drop them from the rankings so as not to help them compete with them.

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Aequitas

Good Point, there was another article actually talking about having the Wikipedia show up just above the sponsors and not in the search listings themselves, wouldn't that be fucked up, as far as I know Google is not even considering this but it has been talked about in the past by the companies.

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scrizzle

This new site should be interesting! Lets see how google reacts to it.

DruSam

The more the merrier. Someone has to keep Google's arrogant asses on their toes whether it is one big competitor or 50 little ones.

emp

<Ahem>
I know someone working there, and they are actively engaged in bettering their SE results. For years.

The SE market is a tough one. It simply does not hold having good or even "better" search results than others, even if your results are better than google.

To get past the I'll google it-reflex requires lots of technical and financial backing, and then you need to market your shit like hell, because if you don't no one will even notice you. And this means pouring loads of money out into the world which, you probably don't have, cause no one knows you.

As for "This way we'll learn how google works".

Geez, people, this is open knowledge.

What google does is no magic.

The "Secret" ingredient is not the formula, it's the parts in a formula and the weight a specific SE puts on different parts in the formula.

"Parts?" You ask.

OK... here we go:
Keyword density, keyword count, domain weight, domain length, path length, text length, meta description length, meta keyword count, abstract, link count, neighborhood, ... etc, pp.

Testing Alta Vista (from the outside) was crazy shit, cause their SERPS just change every 2 weeks. What does this tell us? They're constantly playing with their ranking weights.

"Weights?" You ask.

For a given query, a score is calculated. This means you take the score a website gets for one of the parts and multiply it with a weight. So for "keyword in domain" it gets 1 and you multiply it by the weight you give that part, for example 500.

That would be 500 points a domain with the KW gets, that a domain without the KS dows not get.
And that, kids, is why search engines love domains that fit smack in with a keyword.

So.. finding out how google works would mean having access to their ranking formula and then trying to rebuild their SERPs. Bad for you, you don't know what sites are on their blacklists, etc..

So good luck in finding out how the google's exact formula looks.

Want to know how Search engines and rankings work?

FUCKING GOOGLE IT.

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NoelKuhl

I doubt Wikipedia can be the Google killer. Fuck they're full of spam. And their editors have to fucking lie about their credentials. I remember an episode of SEO rockstars where they made fun of WIkipedia's current search engine (i forgot the url to the search) just fucking playing with it for a part of the show and showing how it turns up nothing but spammers' mighty masterpieces.

With that said, it really is time for someone to challenge Google's search. Google is getting to invasive for comfort.