Wikia Search To Close Up Shop

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 months.

Is this the end of Wikia Search? Wales said no, he said “return to this again when the economy is good.”

Postscript: Here is the blog post from Jimmy Wales on the news.

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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