Google SearchWiki - Interesting

Isn’t this an interesting turn of events.  Google has announced a new feature to their search interface that lets you a) customize your search results the way you want them to appear, and b) make notes about why you like the sites you have changed.  The article on the Google Blog opens:

“Have you ever wanted to mark up Google search results? Maybe you're an avid hiker and the trail map site you always go to is in the 4th or 5th position and you want to move it to the top. Or perhaps it's not there at all and you'd like to add it. Or maybe you'd like to add some notes about what you found on that site and why you thought it was useful. Starting today you can do all this and tailor Google search results to best meet your needs.”

This is a very interesting change to me.  Just the other day I posted on the following on the Diigo forums:

“One of the things that I have always wanted out of Google (and my bookmarks) was to be able to search Google and have the related items from my bookmarks display at the top of the list. I almost always search Google from the search box in Firefox. I type Ctrl+K on my keyboard, type my query and hit enter.
With Diigo, I can set my default search to Diigo+Google. When I do that I get the list of my Diigo bookmarks that match my query, as well as the actual Google results. You can add the special Diigo & Google search by using the customize feature of the Diigo toolbar at http://www.diigo.com/customize_search. “

Now I seem to have the ability to do just this on Google.  I spent a few minutes playing around with the new SearchWiki features and I am not 100% sure what I think about it.  Diigo has a nice bookmarking tool and tags and everything else that goes into a good bookmarking site, and SearchWiki seems to be very manual.  I would have to predefine each search query I want to make, as opposed to just using Diigo to tag and grab links as I find them.

I have been altering the results for the search “Battleground Fantasy Warfare”, a game (link) I enjoy.  It seems easy enough to make the changes.  It would be cooler though to be on a web page, and use a bookmarklet to add the site to my top sites for “xyz” query.  It could even track how you came to the page and suggest queries where it should appear highly.

I do think it is a step in the correct direction, can’t wait to see what comes next.