SearchWinds.com - a credibility-based search engine.
July 26, 2009
I need your help to fix the search engines.
You see, the big engines suffer from a serious problem: they don't take user opinion into consideration.
That's a huge problem, because no machine can come anywhere close to the judgement that a human can make by reading over a page and deciding whether or not it's a good one.
There have been search engines that have tried in the past to allow users to vote on search results, but they all failed miserably.
The reason they have failed is that they counted every vote as equal: whether the voter was a regular joe searcher or a trusted authority figure or a spammer; whether the query was hugely popular or rarely searched for — all votes were equal.
But that's not how real life works, is it?
In the real world, a person's input on what's good or bad depends on the individual's credibility and track record. If a person has proven in the past that their opinions are valuable and trustworthy, then naturally their opinions hold a lot of weight.
On the other hand, if a person has no proven track record, or worse, a poor one, then their opinions won't hold nearly as much weight.
That's how the real world works, and that's how I believe search engines should work, too.
But since the search engines that tried were plagued by spammers because all votes were considered equal, search engines have stopped allowing users to directly influence the search results.
I think this is a HUGE mistake. I think a search engine's BEST asset are the searchers. No machine can judge quality the way a human can. Machines are too easily fooled.
Humans are not so easily fooled. That's why Google pays a large number of human reviewers to pour over their results and find sites that shouldn't be ranking, but that have managed to weasle their way into the top.
You see — algorithms just don't work without human input.
The Credibility Engine
That's why I've created SearchWinds, a new search engine based on the same credibility engine that I built into my instantly popular social-knowledge site, TipDrop.com.
It was a real no-brainer to base a search engine on the same algorithm I use to let users rank tips at TipDrop.
SearchWinds attempts to mimic the trust that people establish over time in the real world by using the credibility engine.
When a user first creates a voting account, they are assigned a credibility rating of 100 — which is the baseline. That gives them a small measure of influence over the search results as they vote for what they feel should rank better (or worse).
However, if a user decides to suggest a page that they feel should be in the results for a query but isn't, then their credibility begins to be put to the test.
When other users vote for the suggested page, then the suggesting user's credibility rises. If they vote against the suggested page, then the suggesting user's credibility falls.
The greater a user's credibility, the more his or her own vote counts towards the credibility of any search result they vote on, and the higher their future submissions initially rank.
The credibility engine greatly reduces the ability of a user to spam the index with junk submissions, because a spammers submissions will quickly get voted down, removing their pages from the search results and decreasing the spammer's credibility.
As the spammer's credibility plummets, his or her future submissions will initially rank further and further down in the results. It doesn't take long before the spammer realizes that they're wasting a lot of time and getting no return for their efforts.
Powered By Bing
When a query is performed for the first time, the initial results are fetched from Bing.com using their developers' API. Only the first 10 results are used.
Bing also has a user account in the SearchWinds system (the username is, of course, bing). All initial query results are credited to that user account.
SearchWinds users can vote on what Bing says should rank for their queries just like they can vote on any user's submissions. As those pages are voted up and down, the Bing user's credibility rises and falls as well.
I think it will be very interesting to see over time how much users agree with Bing's suggested search results.
Powered By YOU
In order for SearchWinds to work well, it's going to need a lot of people searching and voting. That means you! This is your opportunity to help make search what it should be — a spam-free place where the best stuff comes up first. That's hardly a
description of any of the big search engines to date.
So why not go to SearchWinds.com and setup a free account right now? It only takes a few seconds.
Once you've got an account, you can start using SW as your search engine of choice and vote on the results you feel should (or shouldn't) rank.
The submissions you make all link to your user profile, so getting in EARLY and submitting pages and building your credibility offers a great opportunity to really establish yourself as a trusted source of information.
Here's the link:
Together we'll make search great again!
P.S. I've setup a discussion forum for SearchWinds as well. I REALLY want your feedback and input on how to make this new search engine as great as I know it can be.
Please post your thoughts and questions in a comment below.
Comments
42 Responses to “SearchWinds.com - a credibility-based search engine.”
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Jonathan Leger has been earning his living online full-time since the fall of 2004. He regularly posts advice about search engine optimization (his current passion), AdSense and Internet Marketing. He is the creator of a suite of popular software tools, including: Jonathan L Leger 
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Good effort, but don't you think Google already has this feature? How different is this from Google? Or maybe you still have other features planned in the future?
Secondly, IMHO, you should put a captcha at your user registration page and at least send a confirmation email to confirm your account.
This sounds new to me. I might as well try this.
John:
Google does not have this feature, no. There is no "voting" system. They have a wiki system, but that only modifies your personal search — and again, there's no credibility system involved to make it practical to modify their full results.
Very nice idea. When a user suggest an URL, what happens with it?
Gunter
After playing around with for a while, I still think this is not the best approach. Let's face it - if this idea is a great approach, I'd bet that the some of the big search engines have implemented it long ago.
When you create something that evolves around people's choice, it can be extremely misleading as terms such as CHOICE, INTEREST, LIKES, etc. are too general / broad and can be influenced by many factors.
For example, there are a lot of factors which can contribute in people liking a site, NOT ONLY good information / solutions. A warez site for instance, although illegal can have millions of fans, hence giving the site a huge boost. Do you really want these sites to be at the top of the attention tree instead of the official site selling the products?
Another good example is that a site may have more fans / voters just because the owner / author is a celebrity / star / popular individual, but with mediocre information. Do you want to visit a site that is merely written by a popular person or do you want a site that genuinely has useful information that earns its place at the top spot?
A user based results can be manipulated, meaning if you want to go up the ranks, you can always organize / arrange / promote that your site to be given a vote.
Black hate sites will organize a group of people called "SearchWinds Blackhat Voting Group". You get / submit your URL in, everybody votes in for your site. Your user registration page has no captchas and does not confirm the user's email for verification purposes - this will encourage multiple user registration spamming, although I don't think the system is dumb enough to allow votes from the same IPs. Having said that, how does the system work with proxy voting, etc. ?
Even if there are security features such as "only 1 vote from 1 IP / 1 account", anybody who's determined enough can always create a script to disconnect, get a new ip, reregister, and revote.
Not sure how SearchWinds works but I hope the ratio of votes / backlinks / content relativity / etc. should be STRICTLY controlled. I think the votes should be the LAST factor that determines the position / relevancy / popularity of one site unless you can create a "the higher your integrity level the higher your value of vote will be system", although I have no idea how do you establish / increase your "integrity level" when it comes to search engine results.
A point to ponder - How do you DEFINE "integrity" in search engine result votes?
My point is, it's very difficult to pinpoint a genuine click of vote when it comes to humans. That's why Google, Yahoo, MSN, and other search engines have never even dare to venture in this area. It's highly abusable, PERIOD.
Regardless, I wish SearchWinds all the best and hope it'll turn out as what you've planned it to be.
The problem here is that most people won't stop using google. They're just too used to that. Even microsoft couldn't do it.
Nice search engine, but I still love google. don't get me wrong Jon.
Thanks for the great advice! I just came across your blog and love the content. I look forward to reading your posts in the future
Thanks for share. Today I am joining SearchWinds.com and Tipdrop.com. Success for you Jon.
very nice and fast search its faster than bing i think .
Hmm got to see how this one survives amidst the competition!
Thank you for sharing and keep posting!
Great insight! Every search engine we have today are based on some computer algorithms. No matter how complicated these algorithms are, they are no match to human intelligence. Very often, human judgments are intangible and simply can't be programmed into some search engine alogrithms. This is where all today's search engines will hit the wall at some point. User-based search engines will somday replace the algorithm-based search engines.
Another relevant point is that all today search engines are based on keyword searches. Sometimes a couple of keywords can't express the true intention of a search. If you ask another person a question, the question can contain 10-20 keywords. We can understand the true meaning of such a question. If you try the same question at a search engine, the results are often worthless.
And the most important question - will the newly announced deal between giants Microsoft and Yahoo be a good thing to them and bad to Google? I don't think this will change anything. But maybe I'm wrong.
It's a tough call to say whether user votes can accurately drive a search engine. In my experience with the voting widgets that are currently displayed on many sites, very few people actually vote. The ones who do vote usually have some agenda, either to promote their product or to hinder a competitor. SearchWinds is an ambitious project, and I definitely wish you all the best with it. This is just my two cents.
Never heard about it …Good Review and They looks very professional
Hey you seems to be doing a great research work
All good points you bring up about the search engine.
My first time here, enjoyed your blog.
oh thanks. this the first time i heard about that.
I like your idea about voting. People need to be heard and I have seen fantastic web pages not even ranking in the top 30 results for a keyword phrase. Very sad.
In fact I've seen not so good pages ranking in Google and great pages not ranking. So it's just all very unfair that this happens.
All the best,
Eren
I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
I believe SearchWind will be a great search engine.
I think that it is simply unnecessary to change anything in search engines. Not because they work perfectly but because there will always be someone that would use them to earn money. And that someone will use specific methods and tools to provide exact marketing methods of new kind. Who would have thought ten years ago that SEO will be so popular? Within next ten years new methods will arise and new web tools. There is no need to complicate things, all we have to do is floating down the stream.
This is very interesting. Be great if this catches on
Google tries to do this but it's definitey best to put this in the hands of users
I just checked rankings for few keywords in Searchwind , its good concept , why don't you extract result from other Search engines too
According to me no one can change the search results on Google search engine page but they can only edit it that to in Wiki. I have not tried your search engine. Hopefully it is as good as Google.
This is an interesting experiment…but I have my doubts. Obviously, there's an uphill battle to grab any worthwhile slice of marketshare…and even then, this still seems ripe for collusion (think of all the tools that popped up to game social media sites).
"As the spammer's credibility plummets, his or her future submissions will initially rank further and further down in the results." - er, then wont spammers create multiple accounts and vote against genuine users?
Good attempt, but I can see it being gamed.
interesting engine. i think this could be a good thing in the future, but it seems a little complex for me right now, i'll check it out though.
Thank you for sharing and keep posting! The information which you put up on this blog is really good. It would be very helpful for many users if search engine consider there opinion.
O-o-o! This is very interesting…. Really
Okay, I'm going to try it!
Thanks,
Sunny
Body Mojo
Nice job Jon. I think search engines like this are the natural progression of Web 2.0. As people have mentioned, it will be hard to break the habits of people who google everything, but in time it could be possible.
Good search engine.
Hey there,
this sounds great, I have been a long time user of your article software as well as use 1waylinks for close to a year, everything you do has been great! Joined tipdrop as well, just need time to put up some tips,
Have any thoughts on the new google sidewiki?
Kelly
I don't think this is a good option to vote for search results. Because may be i am using google for the first time but i am using MSN quite frequently so It will again be a mess. So the best thing is search for the keyword and get the result. Nobody should have the permission to change it.
This is a real utility. I think it has got all the qualities to become a good search engine. The users will find a little bit difficult at first but you can bet for it that it will be a good search engine in the future.
I haven't tried this search engine. You give me the idea. But I'll have to thing first its popularity.
Hi,
Hey I am not aware about this.Thanks for informing.I will surely go for it.
Hi I use only one search engine and that's Google for sure. But this one sounds quite interesting. So I am looking forward to use it.
Thanks for letting me know about this.
I am not sure if this kind of search engine will work. You people could collude and start bumping their ratings once it became well-know. Social sites like digg are being targeted by such communities.