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How much do you want to bet that Wikisari does not beat out Google? Wales thinks that the lack of discernment in Google search results is a drawback - if he understood the mentality of Googlers, he would realize that for many Google users (and much of the time), this lack is a plus, not a minus.
When I do a Google search, I want my own terms to be the only net cast. I do not want the intervening (confounding) variable of someone else's judgement. If this means that I need to sift through results, that's fine. An experienced Google user generally can find what they are looking for within the first couple of pages or first couple of search tries. I absolutely would not want to have someone else's interpretation of what they think I am looking for color my search.
Good Luck, Jimmy - you may stay afloat, but you won't beat out Google.

Hi Miriam, I definitely see your point - but your preference doesn't necessarily mean that Google will win. One complaint I've heard is that today's search technologies don't do a good enough job interpreting users' input. For instance, “book for children”, “book by children”, and “book about children” are all equivalent to “book children” on keyword-based search engines (example stolen from BarneyPell.com).

Jimmy Wales thinks improvement will come in the form of "social search". Fred Wilson (http://avc.blogs.com) says at least one other prominent company is working on something similar. If you disagree, you might like Powerset's approach better. They recently raised a ton of money to work on a natural language search algorithm that understands the difference between "who acquired company X" and "whom did company X acquire".

With progress being made in both directions, I think the value of a high Google Pagerank will inevitably diminish over time.

From my experience, people making complaints about current search technologies are either unfamiliar with how to get the results they're looking for or they're naysayers. All the examples concerning books and children can easily be accommodated for within the frame work of current search engine technology.

Social searching seems inevitable to fail, insofar as overpowering google, due to the issues addressed by Miriam. It might get off to a good start, but I can foresee it diminishing over time as people realize you're more likely to get relevant results using google and carefully selected wording. This is also a problem with natural language search engines. For a long time people have touted natural language searches as being the "magic bullet" for our present search system. Time and time again they fail for numerous reasons that I won't bother to get into here. It almost saddens me to see people still trying to push natural language searching and people continuing to back it up. A combination of the two could have some merit, however it will always be more convenient, overall, to use our current system. (however full boolean search capabilities with google WOULD be nice :))

Hi bluebonics - Henry Ford supposedly said that before cars came along, consumers thought better transportation = faster horses. Could we be at the same stage with respect to search?

The point isn't whether Google will hold up against Wikiasari or Powerset specifically. It's whether current search technologies have reached the pinnacle of effectiveness. And it seems you agree the answer is no - which means there's room for someone else to improve on Google's algorithm?

BTW, remember the pre-Google Internet? Once upon a time, even Yahoo! was a directory rather than a search engine. People back then didn't clamor for the search technologies that we now have, because they didn't know about them. By the same token, I'm not sure it'll *always* be more convenient to use our current system. We'll just have to wait and see! :)

The idea of this (is it right to call it Search 2.0?) is a great one, but I feel that the power of raw search won't be lost by this. For Miriam, who mentioned Wikiasari not being able to beat Google, I don't think the subject of a "winner" here makes sense. (The topic here was directed toward the future success of SEO.) In order to edit this human powered search engine, another search engine must continue to exist, or where else would the information easily come from?

As far as SEO goes, always keep your customers loyal (and the word of mouth rapid) and do not rely on SEO so heavily.

Thank you for the reasoned responses to my comment (and the fact that others understood my perspective).
Here are a couple of thoughts:
Google can always improve (though on its own terms, not by becoming something different) - as long as it does not reduce results automatically and only offers the option of including limiters and/or other modifiers as the searcher desires.
The reason I spoke of Wikisari not 'beating out' Google, was because of Jimmy Wales' tone when speaking of his new venture. If he had phrased his comments along the lines of 'we are trying something different, and it may be useful to some people in some cases', I would not have even made the comment - or would have phrased it differently. His vibe was much closer to 'here's something that is going to be better than Google' - hence my comments. My issue wasn't regarding a 'winner' - it was regarding whether his model was going to be an improvement on Google. There is obviously plenty of room for different models of search - just each one on its own terms, and for different purposes.

Sure, I can envision neuro network responsive search engines that assimilate and search for the information we desire from patterns in our brain's firing neuro networks. What we come down to here, however, is that these "new" search technologies (natural language search is far from new, yet people still view it as such... for the obvious reason) are just horses with different shoes. They're not the equivalent of a car replacing horses for transportation. We've merely taken the saddle, added a few frills, and changed the shape of the foot straps.

Oh, and I do remember the pre-Google internet. Google hasn't changed much from the likes of Webcrawler and Altavista of the days of yore. The web just wasn't as "mainstream" as it has become today, hence the "clamor for search technologies". Oh, and I didn't mean that our current system will always be the most convenient, however it will always be the most convenient in relation to the other proposed search systems that are essentially word driven (I do enjoy my idea from above though ;)). This isn't to say that their algorithms cannot be improved upon (as i stated, full boolean search capabilities would be preferable) but the best system will always be that akin to Google's and Microsoft's and Yahoo's until there is a profound advancement of the physical technology itself.

I like your idea too!! For some reason it make me think of Pleo (http://www.ugobe.com/pleo/index.html). It's a soon to be on the market robotic dinosaur that responds to stimuli and learns from past experiences. Supposedly each Pleo eventually develops a different personality, based on interactions with its owner.

Before we reach neuro-responsive search, maybe we'll have Pleo-like search, where different people get different results based on their previous web browsing behavior? And instead of the kind of social search that Jimmy Wales envisions, maybe there'll be an Amazon-like recommendation engine running in the background, matching you with results that were clicked on by people whose past clickstreams are similar to yours?

There is nothing wrong when Jimmy Wales thinks there wwould be an improvement in the form of "social search".

Already in dziningspot.blogspot.com I talked about Previewseek a user friendly Search Engine that vanished overtime.

Similarly I am skeptical as how long Jimmy Wales human-powered search engine will be. Well, anyway nothing is permanent in Search Technology all the best to Wikiasari.

There is actually already a People powered search engine, it is called AnooX. You can see them here: www.anoox.com
And AnooX has patents pending on People powered search results, so should Wiki copies Anoox as they say they are going to do, I am sure Anoox will sued them and will likely win.
Now as far as results of Anoox, overall I think it is the best search results, not always, but most the time.
But there are other reasons Anoox is I think the up and coming search engine to do to Google what Google did to Yahoo, they are:
1- Anoox is Open & decentralized
2- Anoox is not-for-profit
In fact our company has cut its Ad expenses by like $2000 per month since when we started Advertising on Anoox.

Just wanted to reply to the last post about Anoox having already done the People Powered search engine.
I just checked them out, and I think it is really cool :)
Thanks for telling us about them.
I wonder why I have not read much about them in the Press!!!
What I specially liked about Anoox is their promise that they will be in the search engine business only and not enter any other business.
As a small business owner I can tell you that I am terrified of any day Google or Yahoo entering our business and killing us for sure.
So it is a breath of fresh air to see that there is a search engine like Anoox which is democratically generated by the Knowledge of the people and which puts the benefit of the search engine community ahead of their profits. Anoox has my Vote.

It does not look good for the creators of a service to create misleading posts in a blog in order to advertise. Those posts will be deleted very soon.

Thanks, Kayla! :) Instead of deleting those comments, let me point out that I looked Anoox.com up on both Quantcast and Compete.com, and the site's traffic is in the 1000 visitors/month range. So it seems advertising there would not generate much exposure. The search results need A LOT of work, too. I searched for "load balancing" and got "free software files download".