Google SearchWiki To Get Off Button, Might Get Used As Ranking Signal

Dec 10, 2008 at 9:20am ET by Barry Schwartz

TechCrunch has coverage of Google’s Marissa Mayer talk at Le Web conference in Paris, France. In that talk, Mayer said SearchWiki will gain an option to let users turn it off and reiterated statements that Google’s previously made, that SearchWiki data might be used in the future to help rank ordinary search results.

After SearchWiki launched, a number of bloggers including TechCrunch were vocal in wanting a way to turn the feature off, since once it is enabled, there is no removing it. However, Google stuck to its guns that an opt-out wouldn’t be offered any time soon. Now that’s changed. Mayer promised to add a way to turn off SearchWiki within the first quarter of next year.

As for ranking, at launch Google said to Search Engine Land and others that SearchWiki might get used to influence rankings in the future, even though it currently is not.

Mayer explained that if “thousands of people” would remove a result from a search results page, then it might make sense to remove the page from everyone’s results. TechCrunch promised to post a video of the interview with Marissa later, so check the site later for her exact words.

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.

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