SearchWiki went live this week and allows people to customise the re-order of results and add comments to pages for future reference. Pages can also be completely removed or if something relevant doesn't come up then a user can add a page in. These changes are only made to results for the one user but are stored for future searches - around 40% of Google searches are thought to be repeats of earlier queries.
The added interactive element of the search engine has been brought in to help users who frequently search for the same terms and although Google have said it won't affect the main search results as seen by anyone else, many spectators feel that if they see regular patterns emerging then their algorithm may get a little tweak - either just to update the top results or to help remove spam.
Cedric Dupont, SearchWiki product manager, said: "You now have more control over what search results appear for a given query on Google.
"SearchWiki allows you to reorder, remove or add notes to specific web search results so that the next time you do the same search, you'll see the customised result set that you prefer."
After a member has edited results, they can still see Google's own version of the search by clicking a link at the bottom of the page. The public results will also display public comments, with Google usernames associated with each review.
