http://alpha.search.wikia.com/

http://re.search.wikia.com/search#search%20engine%20optimization

It still has a long long way to go .. I tried a few very simple keywords and it's just crap ...

Here are some reviews from TechCrunch:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/06/wikia-search-is-a-complete-letdown/
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/06/wikia-search-launches-reasonable-but-not-great/

And I personally believe that search is not about humans .. the fact that every single day there are thousands of new keywords means that human edited results just can't be perfect .. it's different from 'knowledge' or an encyclopedia where information is static ..

[Moved from "wikia search launched today" – Tony]

wikia search, an open search engine , launch in alpha today..

http://search.wikia.com/wiki/Search_Wikia

or test it

http://alpha.search.wikia.com/

happy hacking!

What a shame, it lacks UTF support.

> Incidentally, I also got HTTP Status 500 errors
> when trying to view cached pages...

And sometimes the Cached links return a completely different page!

Nothing much to see, nothing much to review. The index is from an acquisition, you can't contribute in a meaningful way yet etc.

If you do a search that doesn't have more results than the first 2 pages, the site will generate a button that makes it appear that there is a 3rd page of results. Clicking on that button will just generate a new button but never brings up any results.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2131/2175940730_bbf16e0ede_o.png

The stars next to results aren't tied to anything as stated by the following message you get when you try to rank a result.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2224/2175940744_489a29a39f_o.png

After all the hype it's a little disappointing. As I mentioned at SEW, a query for "search engine" provides no mention of Google, Yahoo, MSN, Alta Vista and/or others.

A query for "Cable News Network" finds nothing about CNN, SEOmoz ranks #2 for "greatest living american", a French site ranks #1 for "New York" and Beth.D's photo shows up for "ugliest dude I've ever seen". Oh and don't forget the "d" when searching for "Google Blogoscope"!

If they know the results are poor, why release the product? Oh well...

:)

> If they know the results are poor, why release the product?

Because everybody and their dog expects them to? Publicity can be a real pain nowadays... ;-)

> Wikia's search engine concept is that of trusted user
> feedback from a community of users acting together in
> an open, transparent, public way. Of course, before we
> start, we have no user feedback data. So the results
> are pretty bad. But we expect them to improve rapidly
> in coming weeks, so please bookmark the site and return often.

According to some posts by Seth Finkelstein, Wikipedia had some issues with transparency in the past...
http://www.sethf.com/infothought/blog/
e.g. http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/archives/001299.html (sorry, slow internet connection from where I am, Seth's blog's still loading but there is more)

> Right now, the most important thing you
> can do is help with the "miniarticles" that
> appear at the top of popular search terms.
> These will vary in purpose according to the
> circumstance, but the primary uses will be:

When I want to edit a "mini article," I usually go to Wikipedia... and then the article pops up on top of search results of Google etc. (as Tony mentions).
Editing the result of a single query seems... weird? Does that mean I only edit an article for that single query, i.e. it is lost for the 1,000 variants for that query? But "weird" isn't bad, I guess it's just not what we're used to right now (unless you consider Technorati's "WTF" feature, or Google Co-op's custom oneboxes...)

You know what.... I don't care about this Search Wikia thing. It will never get used. It's not different enough for people to stop using Google.

It's not a "search?" search engine either, which means a lot of online service/tools won't be able to implement it.

<<It's not different enough for people to stop using Google.>>
In my eyes, it's very different and perhaps that's a good thing for some, but for me its a bad thing. People don't like change, and people like accurate results (or, at least one result). Neither of which is suited to Wikia Search.

And besides which, when you build hype up and then it turns out to be rubbish, you're going to get a lot of negative publicity.

>Editing the result of a single query seems... weird?

What about the fact that something like 20% of queries are unique? How is one to "edit" the unknown?

>It's not a "search?" search engine either, which means a lot of online >service/tools won't be able to implement it.

Good point but I think that issue is causing confusion for some because Wikia bills themselves as a "search engine".

"Wikia is working to develop and popularize a freely licensed (open source) search engine."

I did a search for a term I have a website about. My website was number one! But the first result was with the www subdomain, and the one with no subdomain was number seven. The result that was number two, in my opinion, should be number one. It has much more backlinks and such.

Wikia Search tool; The only search engine that can hurt your civic pride and self esteem with one query. A search for the term pittsburgh (my home town) results in 9 out of the first 10 results being for laser acne removal. Does Wikia think that Pittsburghers are greasy, fugly, pimple poppers? Only time will tell... Well, either way, there is definitely some kind of temporary exploit there. All of the results are redirects that kick you over to the same domain.

Sounds like this might be interesting: Marissa Mayer at the DLD conference in Munich discussing "Humans Interupting Algorithms" with reference to Wikia Search and Mahalo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gL4cg-vIQY

<< The [video] is Marissa’s comment on what she sees as a false dichotomy – Google Page Rank, she notes, is based on real humans linking to sites on the web. Listening to her felt like a cold shower after a night of heavy partying. >>

From: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/21/mahalo-v-wikia-search/

I've not been able to listen to this yet though, so don't shoot me down if it's not interesting... ;-)

FYI, it's really hard to hear what she is saying!