Mar 31, 2009 at 1:06pm ET by Barry Schwartz

News.com reports that Wikia Search is giving up and closing up shop. Search Wikia launched an alpha release in January 2008, where Chris Sherman gave it a poor review. Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikia, told News.com "It was going to take at least an another year to two before it's usable by the public, and we can't afford that right now." Due to the economy and the need to get to "profitability" right now, Wikia Search needs to shut down. Two full-time employees will be out of a job due to the decision. Wales said that Wikia Search only had 10,000 unique users a month over the past six mo [...]

Wikia Search Releases Third Party Search Enhancement Platform

Oct 8, 2008 at 12:01am ET by Chris Sherman

Wikia Search, the "open source" search engine that launched to great fanfare earlier in the year, has introduced a new platform (Wikia Intelligent Search Extensions or “WISE”) that allows third parties to provide an enhanced search result—known as a “WISEApp”—for specific keywords. WISEApps allow publishers or searchers to enhance search results, in a similar way to Yahoo's Search Monkey or Google's SiteLinks enhancements. For example, the Washington Post WISEApp provides people searching for specific information, such as “Barack Obama” or “John McCain”, with relevant [...]

Wikia Introduces “Evolution” Toolbar To Expand Reach To Other Search Engines

Aug 7, 2008 at 10:18am ET by Greg Sterling

Like many before it, most recently Mahalo, Wikia Search has introduced a Firefox toolbar, called "Wikia Evolution," to expand the site's reach and engage more users in the process of adding and annotating search results. In the notes, it suggests that Google is taking a page from its community playbook: "Already, we’re the cutting edge when it comes to incorporating user feedback into our search results, so much so that Google is experimenting with eerily similar features." The new Wikia toolbar allows users to add URLs/pages to the Wikia index (from wherever they are online) and edit or [...]

Search 4.0: Social Search Engines & Putting Humans Back In Search

May 28, 2008 at 1:18pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Previously I've covered what I dubbed Search 3.0, how search engines have evolved toward blending vertical or specialized results into "regular" web listings. Today, the step beyond that: Search 4.0, how personal, social and human-edited data can be used to refine search results. The Search Evolution So Far Before going ahead, let me summarize what I covered in my past article, in terms of how search engines have changed over time to create and rank the results you get when doing a search: Search 1.0 (1996): Pages ranked using "on-the-page" criteria Search 2.0 (1998): Pages [...]

SMX Social: Just What Did Calacanis Say About SEO & More Recaps

Apr 25, 2008 at 8:06pm ET by Danny Sullivan

At our SMX Social Media Marketing conference this week, we had a great panel on the future of human powered search. Jason Calacanis of Mahalo, Jimmy Wales of Wikia Search, and Steven Marder of Eurekster all took part. Jason had some remarks on SEO that set off the usual wave of upset. But as I commented to those who weren't at the panel, by the end of Q&A, Jason -- along with Jimmy Wales and Seven Marder -- were agreeing about the usefulness of SEO. It's all down to the definitions. Below you can hear Jason's presentation yourself, then you can hear the Q&A portion that covered search [...]

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