It's been coming for a while, but Google has launched its search listing recommendation system, SearchWiki.
Right now users who are logged in can push results up, or ban them from future listings (but only for themselves)... or they can leave comments attached to listings (which anyone else can see).
Here's a grab from a Guardian search I ran earlier - note the up arrow and cross icons.
Have you used it yet? What do you think? Useful? Pointless?
I'm very undecided - largely because, at the moment it's a very limited implementation. While I suppose it's not bad, for now the benefit is just limited to you... which seems to be a waste of the effort people will be putting in.
Why wouldn't Google expand it so that your recommendations helped inform the company's famous ranking algorithm? A number of reasons spring to mind: gaming the system and spamming are just two. But perhaps there's also a philosophical problem here - after all, on many occasions before we've heard about the company's blind faith in the machines, in the religion of automation.
But wouldn't improving search through human interaction undermine belief in the system? Shouldn't Google, with all its power and technical prowess, simply be able to build a better algorithm?
Of course, I might be getting a little over the top. Perhaps it's simply testing how people use the system before using it to harness the wisdom of crowds. But it'll certainly be interesting to see where this one goes - especially since, as we saw just yesterday, not every new idea from Mountain View makes it out alive.
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