The search engine, set to “take on” Google, built by the same people as Wikipedia has finally been released as a public beta.
Much to the disappointment of the majority of the media, Wikia is in no way a finished product.
I have spent a while experimenting with the new “human powered” search project, but, mainly due to the limited search index, am bitterly disappointed with the quality of search results. For example, searching “GoSquared” on Wikia will, as the first result, give one of our previous most popular posts, while Google will present you with the GoSquared homepage. Which is more useful to our potential visitors: our home page, designed to provide easy access for first time viewers to anywhere else on the site, or a blog post we wrote several weeks ago?
Wikia’s search index needs updating fast, and their social tools for promoting “good” pages, and demoting “bad” ones need to be developed greatly, and fast. Thankfully Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia and Wikia, has already responded to many criticisms by commenting on various blogs, including TechCrunch. He made the comment “It’s a project to *build* a search engine, not a search engine.”
Whatever is said, I sincerely doubt many will be switching from Google just yet.
