Lets Define “A Person” – Is a Bot With a Google Account a “Person”?

Most of you have heard by now of the new Google Searchwiki feature. As it stands now, it’s basically a way for users to organize their own personal search results, seemingly aimed at taking the place of bookmarking (I guess). The actual value to an individual user to be able to sort and comment on their own search results is questionable, but there’s a bigger question surrounding Searchwiki.

Will the preferences of individuals in Searchwiki affect the real results?

The answer: “maybe”. The real answer: “definitely”.

Arrington just posted a talk with Marissa Mayer where she reveals the following:

Mayer also talked about Google?s use of user data created by actions on Wiki search to improve search results on Google in general. For now that data is not being used to change overall search results, she said. But in the future it?s likely Google will use the data to at least make obvious changes. An example is if ?thousands of people? were to knock a search result off a search page, they?d be likely to make a change.

Now since Searchwiki was announced people have been clamoring about the fact that if Google uses data collected by Searchwiki to modify the organic results, the system *will* be gamed. But we also all like to think that Google knows what it’s doing. It knows how to combat cheaters.

But I’m not so sure. I mean to me, the introduction of Searchwiki shows Google’s inability to combat cheaters. I refuse to believe that Searchwiki has any real value to individual users, and that its ultimate goal is to improve the general search results. Which means Google is outsourcing its algorithm to the masses.

The bolded quote above makes it seem as if Google is only going to modify search results if the Searchwiki shows a significant and widespread trend. That’s good. But I really don’t see it stopping there. This looks like Google’s solution for a broken, link-based algorithm. I think before long it will have a much more widespread application.

But how little or small the effect of Searchwiki will be on natural search results is irrelevant. The bottom line is that if Searchwiki has any affect on the SERPs, it *will* be gamed.

The problem here is the fact that Google is trusting “people” to show them trends. On the internet a “person” is defined as either a unique human user, or a bot who acts exactly like a unique human user. Yea I know Google will have software in place to stop the obvious gaming (some IP just registered 10k accounts and voted off a website in Searchwiki … probably a bot!). But what about the smarter bots? Ones that come across completely natural? They exist, believe it or not. And before long, they might be affecting your rankings and subsequently, your income.