ONLINE RESOURCE OF THE MONTH

Wikipedia Founder Brings Search Project

The founder of Wikipedia says taking the online
encyclopedia's collaborative approach into the field
of search won't dethrone Google Inc. or another
major search engine — at least not soon.

After months of talk and a few weeks of
invitation-only testing, Wikia Search is to open to
the general public next week.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales says his goal is to
let volunteers improve search technology collectively,
the way Wikipedia lets anyone add or change entries,
regardless of expertise.

"That reduces the sort of bottleneck of two or three
firms really controlling the flow of search traffic,"
said Wales, chairman of Wikia Inc., the for-profit
venture behind the search project.

Engineers at Google and other search companies
continually tweak their complex software algorithms
to improve results and fight spammers — those who
try to artificially boost the rankings of their own
sites. Search companies have not disclosed many
details to avoid tipping off competitors and spammers.

Wales' approach would open that process. Initially,
participants will help make such decisions as whether
a site on "Paris Hilton" refers to the celebrity or
a French hotel.

Danny Sullivan, editor in chief of the industry Web
site Search Engine Land, has his doubts. Finding all
the Web sites to index and staying ahead of spammers
are huge undertakings, Sullivan said.

"I think he doesn't really understand the scale of
what Google has to handle in terms of the queries
from around the world and the amount of traffic that
flows to it and the attempts that are made to try
to manipulate it," Sullivan said.

Wales said the project would launch with about 50
million to 100 million Web pages indexed, a fraction
of the billions available with major search engines.

Even as Wales tries to challenge search, Google has
announced a project that could challenge Wikipedia.
Google's version, called knol, will differ from
Wikipedia by identifying who wrote each article and
giving authors a chance to share in Google's
advertising revenue.

search.wikia.com