The most obvious issue, unfortunately, is the one on which the whole project rests. By making this into an open source project, Wales has invited everyone to look at the source code for the developing search engine’s algorithm. Are we sure this is better than the “black box” approach that Wales denounces so strongly?
Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft keep their search algorithms secret for a reason. So many people use the major search engines to find whatever they are looking for online that getting your web site to the top of the search engine results pages for appropriate keywords can seriously increase your traffic, the amount of business you conduct, and your company’s profit. Optimizing a web site to achieve this result is now a full-time occupation – literally, as SEO Chat readers know all too well.
So important is this climb to the top that many in the business will use deceptive techniques to achieve their goals. Guessing what Google’s algorithm will do in response to specific optimization efforts often plays a major role. So what do you suppose will happen when a search engine actually publishes its algorithm for all to see? How long do you think it will take before the search engine spammers examine the code and start exploiting all the flaws they can find? Wale admitted that “If published algorithms make it too easy for spammers to game the system then we’ve got a real problem and my whole idea won’t work.”
Wales has stated that he will rely on the search engine’s community to police spammers, at least in part. Judging from the number of spammers out there, however, any community will be overwhelmed in short order. According to George Gardner, writing for Tech.Blorg, “The bottom line is that after Wikia Search’s algorithm is known, it will not only be just another search engine, but will reasonably be the worst search engine on the Internet.”
This isn’t the only problem Wales faces, though it might be the biggest. The other issue is one of scale. comScore Media Matrix’s numbers for June listed Wikipedia as the ninth most popular site on the Internet, with 47 million unique US visitors. Google, however, had well over 123 million unique US visitors in the same time period. Granted, Wikia Search will not have to face those numbers overnight, but what will keep them from hitting a bottleneck?
If it was simply a matter of a computer-controlled algorithm, the solution might be better programming and more hardware. But Wales envisions people directly involved in making the search engine’s results better, perhaps by some kind of voting system. At the Internet’s current rate of growth, it’s questionable whether volunteers would be able to keep up.
Finally, Wikia Search will no doubt face the same issue that Wikipedia faces: the question of accuracy. Andrew Keen, who seems to be making a career out of railing against user-generated content, pointed out that there is no way to tell whether anonymous human contributors have their own agenda – and what that agenda is if they do. “I don’t trust Wikipedia and I certainly wouldn’t trust an open-source search engine that is shaped by anonymous people,” he said.
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