An Interesting Search Engine and Wiki Spirit
Though Google is the most popular search engine in the world, there are many other search engines trying to compete with Google. And a lot of ranking algorithm have been raised in addition to ranking based on Click-through rate. It’s unfair to say any of them is better or worse as each has certain advantages in certain fields. Thus, there is plenty space for us to think about how search engine should function and play a role in people’s lives.
In the link below, I see an interesting novel model of search engine, though it can only be called an attempt at this time. Kossatz and his co-founder Gerald Baeck initiated to build a new search engine, called Blippex, in the spirit of “Wiki”. This means, in contrast to traditional way of searching where engines dig into links of web pages, Blippex is built by its own users: it starts from zero and gradually collects pages that users have visited. Evidently, Blippex directly captures interests of users.
Blippex also takes DwellRank rather than PageRank to rank search results, which decides relevance by the frequency and length of time users visit certain website. The choice of ranking algorithm is in consistency with the searching algorithm, which cares about what users care about. It is also largely immune to common cheating behaviors in aim of raising pages’ rank.
It’s clear that the searching experience of Blippex is constructed highly around users, in terms of both content and ranking, and personalization of search results are easy to be carried out in this setting. It is quite different from other typical search engines such as Google where authority overweighs.
Unavoidably, it has shortcomings as well. For example, professional results, i.e. pages that contain professional information, can hardly be indexed or ranked high as they are rarely visited by users; and the number of pages indexed by Blippex is much less than other common search engines initially. Another barrier may be worry of privacy, though the establishers try hard to enforce anonymity of users.
However, considering Wikipedia which also starts from zero but now grows into the largest encyclopedia, it doesn’t seem impossible that Blippex can be the next. This is also related to information cascade: as long as some people start to use Blippex and a trend is formed, the direct benefit of using Blippex will encourage more and more people get involved, and eventually makes its search base large enough. Rewarding mechanism can also be introduced here to encourage users to input new pages and links.
This is just an enlightening instance how we can apply “Wiki Spirit” to other areas in this information era. “Wiki” is really an amazing idea, as it utilizes collective intelligence without causing information cascade that easily happens in group decision-making, due to the allowance of anonymity of contribution which gives users freedom to speak out ideas. This also makes usage an interesting and interactive experience. As is pointed out by Cass Sunstein in Infotopia, the concept of “Wiki” not only applies to information sharing but also to decision-making, and is a promising future trend to optimize decisions.
Links:
http://qz.com/129879/this-is-the-first-interesting-search-engine-since-google/
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2012/05/book-review-infotopia-by-cass-sunstein.html