Google “updated” their search engine results to now include (as a user opt-in) their SearchWiki functionality, which allows logged-in users to promote their preferred sites to the top of search listings.
I’m guessing it won’t be long before we start seeing people posting on Plurk, Twitter etc asking for people to promote their own sites with a view to getting their sites pushed towards the top of the results, much like the Digg and Stumbleupon requests we see so often.
Although there’s no indication from Google themselves (as far as I know) that “promoted” sites will move up the rankings, I guess it’s safe to assume that they’ll at least be using the data to determine the popularity of sites, otherwise, why do it? What purpose does it serve other than to provide Google with more search data? I can’t honestly see it being of tremendous use to users. If you like a site, you’ll bookmark it, not promote it so it’s near the top next time you do a search.
Should site owners be asking their readers to promote their sites for them using SearchWiki? Is it of any real use to users?
