searchWiki vs. Egosurfing

http://www.google.com/search?q=Karthik+Sankar

Many a times I have typed my own name, ‘Karthik Sankar’ in the Google search bar to find where my blog or website is listed. Sometimes it features as the fourth best, but sometimes it appears only in the second or third page. I have always felt happy when my page is listed with a better rank. But when it moves down the ranking, I have always thought of doing something to improve, probably add my name some fifty odd times in the <META> tag ??? But oops, Google does not use META for indexing !!!

Now Google has introduced searchWiki. It gives me an option to rank the pages, promote them to the top, add pages that are relevant to the search term, delete pages from the search results and so on. Nice idea !!! Now I can promote my website to the top…

But then I learnt, the changes made are visible to my eyes only. The preferences are stored in my Google account. Hmmmm… So even now, my site will feature in the second or third page only, if someone else searches for my name. Still, some consolation for me. I will find my name right on top when I go egosurfing again !!

The preferences are not completely personal. Google allows us to add comments to the webpages. These comments, along with the details about the number of times the site has been promoted or demoted, is available in the “Search all notes for this searchWiki” link.

searchWiki is really a powerful and useful addition to Google search. If I search for a term and the website I needed is listed somewhere down the order, I can make sure the next time I search, it is right on top. Really useful, except for people like me who do Egosurfing. I probably must log out and then search for my name….