Yesterday, Google made the next evolutionary change with searchWiki. searchWiki is new functionality that allows users to promote or remove search engine results from Google. While it’s being touted as a way to customize your own search results, there’s more to it then that. If Google decides to implement “promoted pages” as a factor into their already powerful algorithm, search engine optimization will change as we know it. The idea here: citation plus recommendation equals top listing.

How does it work?

Let’s explore how this would work. If I search for fly fishing equipment today (yes, I’m avoiding the running shoes example), I get results of an assortment of online fishing retailers. If I them promote Cabella’s to the top of this list becase I love their site, their checkout process and their customer service, awesome. The next time I search for fly fishing equipment, Cabella’s is listed at the top. But let’s say a very tiny tiny fraction of Google user’s do this. Um, I don’t know, like 20,000 people - I would consider this a micro fraction - Google can then look at that data and in effect say, Cabella’s is a very authoritative site linked to by many other sites and users seem to really like it, let’s place it number 1.

Keyword search results will in essence become top rated sites. The rating will be based off incoming links and user recommendations. This will prevent SEO professionals from being able to game the system. Instead, their sites will have to first rank high and then deliver on user experience. User’s aren’t going to promote sites that don’t fullfill on their respective promises and if the site’s really bad, they are liable to remove it all together.

Gaming the System

This new style of ranking would make the barrier to entry very high for new sites. It’s already high if you’re a new site trying to take market share based off competitive keywords. Usually involving a significant link building process that often borders on unethical. Now, you’d have to have a combination of link building and promoting. As anyone who’s into Digg.com can tell you, gaming promotion is entirely possible and is done regularly. However, the difference is Google’s shear numbers. Maybe, in the example above, they raise the number from 20,000 promotions to 200,000 promotions. A much tougher number to game. For very popular and competitive keywords, the number moves up to 2,000,000 promotions. Impossible to game.

When will it happen?

I’m confident that Google will sit back for awhile and be content gathering promotions and removals. This data will be initially be used for nothing more that personalizing search engine results for any logged in user. If it catches on, they might slowly begin to integrate it into the algorithm. They can easily start with those search terms that have the largest number of promotions and removals. If a search term doesn’t have any user sourced recommendations, they gracefully fall back on to their current algorithm. You know the one that’s gained them 74% of the market share in the US. But if it does catch on, be sure that this will be a historic game changer that will keep Google well ahead of it’s competitors for a long time to come.

Upon clicking on the up arrow, I got the following pop-up window:

After I clicked continue, the arrow was then shown green.

Update: Apparently, Google is calling this searchWiki. Here is there official post on the subject including an introductory video. Read why this is going to be a huge evolution to search engine results.

The extreme press coverage is no doubt due to the simple fact that it is Google offering the service. Amazon has had some what similar services for a while and has received a fraction of the press that Google has or will garner over this platform. However, there is still some very important differences about Google’s offering.

1. It’s dead simple. Amazon’s services still require a lot of very technical IT knowledge to utilize. If the video demos of Google’s version are to be believed, the developers need not worry about these system details.
2. It integrates with Google’s account services. This means it’s very easy to build a web application that allows logging in via Google. I’m not sure if this is a pro or a con and I believe only time will tell on this one.
3. It only has support for Python. Sorry PHP and Rails developers. However, they have said they will release other languages after some intial feedback. My money is that PHP will be the first.

So here’s my thoughts. When they open it to PHP, a ton of PHP developers will flock to it. It will be free, or at least very cheap, and much easier to manage then a shared host or a dedicated server. Google will continue to roll out objects/modules that make it easy to integrate with other sites and services, and since it will be on the Google infrastructure, it will be easier for Google to aquire the popular apps and integrate them into their services.

So who wins?

Google does because it means more page inventory that they can sell advertising on. More data in their database that they can organize and present in different ways. More adoption of their technologies like GFS and Big Table.

Developers do because it means scalability and rock bottom costs. It means a farm system for exit strategies. It means feeling like you are “part of Google” without being employed there.

Who do you think wins?

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Google Maps
The family is heading down to Phoenix this weekend to do some reconnaissance as well as visit with some family. Since we are flying, we need to rent a car to cruise around and check out day care facilities and apartments before heading out to Anthem. I wanted to see if I rented a car at the airport, which rental company would have a drop off closest to Anthem. Using the new My Maps function in Google Maps, I added a push pin for the airport and then did “Find Businesses” to search for each rental company. I added a push pin to the North most location. Here is my result:

Google Earth
After I had decided that most the rental places have a drop off point close to where I needed, I noticed a new icon with the KML link. Most Google Earth geeks will recognize this as an opportunity to view the map with snazzy fly overs. This added each point I mapped in Google Maps to a layer in Google Earth. This then gave me the idea to use Google Earth to map out the location of the apartments we were looking to visit as well as my wife’s new work and the day care facilities.

By using Google Earth, I was able to see a larger area and use some interesting tools like the ruler to gauge distances. I was still able to search by address or find businesses as well as add my own markers.

Both tools are helping me familiarize myself with the area. I’m a sucker for aerial shots, so for me this is the most interactive and interesting way to do some mundane research.

Once I registered and logged in, I saw the blog option and thought I would give it a spin. This post is written completely in Writely.

A couple of observations:

• The UI is completely different from Google Spreadsheets. The colors, icons, layout all different.
• Its a little slow.
• When blogging, I don’t see a place for trackbacks

UPDATE : After posting from writely, I viewed the post. Everything looks fine except the title didn’t carry over. I had to edit in Wordpress to add it. Also, the tags/categories didn’t populate when posting.

My wife is starting a new business and as her geek husband, it is my job to set up the company on email and calendaring. Since it is just a start up, there is no way I want to outfit the company with Microsoft Office or use Microsoft Outlook Express. I want the email to come to and be sent from her domain, kidsearlyed.com, so most hosted solutions were out of the question. So I decided to apply for the beta of Gmail for your domain. I had to answer some qualifying questions and it only took about 12 hours to receive my invite. Here is a step by step walk through of setting it up:

1. I received my email saying I had been invited to participate to my regular Google account.

2. After clicking on the link, I had to login using my regular Gmail account login.

3. After logging in, I was taken to an administrative Dashboard for the domain I wanted to use. You can see on the left of the screen shot that my plan includes 25 free email accounts. I have yet to find a way to get more but I was looking purely out of curiosity. I only need about 5 right now.

The first notice it to update my MX records for domain to point the mail to Google.

4. Clicking on “Change MX Records” took me to a page describing how to change my MX records in GoDaddy’s system. I had never previously specified which registrar I used for the domain so they must have automated this through a whois. Or, GoDaddy just happened to be the first option in the drop down. They had many others available but I didn’t grab a list. The instructions were comprehensive and pretty fool proof.

5. After making the change in GoDaddy’s system, I had to wait for the new MX records to propagate. In the meantime, I decided to explore the other options. Over on the left, I clicked on the link, “Domain Settings.” Here I was able to set a text name for the company and contact information for the admin contact. The text name is used on the private login page.

After saving the Organization Name and Support Contact, I the screen was refreshed with the new options of changing the color of the sign in box on the sign in page, uploading a new logo to appear in the upper left of Gmail and Google Calendar, and the option to enable Google Talk and catch all email addresses.

The next step was to add some users. There are two links in the left navigation, Users and Create User. The Create User link takes you to a very simple form. Add the First Name, Last Name and Email Address and your done. You can also use a random password generated for you or set your own.

Once a user is added, Sign In instructions are displayed. These can be printed or emailed.

Clicking on the Users link on the left displays a list of all created users including their last login date. Nothing special here.

Hosted Gmail also provides the option to set up an email list. Type in an alias in the first box under choose a name and then select email addresses in the next box. You need to search for each recipient that you want to add.

In my setup, I created staff@ and added all the users to that list.

Under Advanced Tools, you can do a bulk upload of users. Simply type them out in a spreadsheet, save them as a CSV and upload.

That’s basically all there was to it. Once the MX records were setup, I logged in as one of the users I created. Notice my new Gmail logo in the upper left. Each user is presented with the Terms of Service upon logging in.

These next screens should look familiar to any one that has a Gmail account. These are the same screens that each new regular Gmail user is shown.

Even the two default email messages.

Screen shot of hosted Google Calendar. No real difference here. (Again, notice my custom logo shows up in the Calendar.

All in all, this was super easy to set up. I setup a redirect from email.kidsearlyed.com to the login page for Host Gmail so it would be easier for users to get to. Hope this was helpful.

Technorati : Email, Gmail, Google