In short, it doesn't much.
Firstly, the data they can gather is not going to be very useful for calculating rankings.
I believe these will be the most common uses for the feature:
- The website has angered the user and they want to punish them! They now have a button they can push!
- Some people will blacklist their competitors' sites, believing it will have a negative effect on their ranking.
- The user visits a website regularly and they normally search for it rather than typing in the URL. Now, they can make it appear at the top of the results.
For Google, number 1 would be useful for targeting and identifying spammy websites. Number 3 might be used by Google when ranking sites for their business name, or brand names, but not much for any general search results.
The main thing that makes me think that SearchWiki isn't going to change the world of SEO that much is the point that Google already has access to much better user data, and has done for some time!
Google has tons of user data, primarily from the toolbar and google analytics, and if Hitwise can strike up a deal with 30% of all the ISP's, I'll be amazed if Google hasn't got some access to that data also.
This means that Google already has access to more useful, trustworthy data, like how people navigate the web. This is a far better indication of the quality of search results than anything you can get from the SearchWiki.
For example, they can already tell from their current data exactly how people search for certain terms. Say someone searches for 'Hotel London', and the searcher visits the first 4 results. When on the first 3 sites, they navigate away from the page within the first 10 seconds, but the when on the 4th website they stay on there for 10 minutes. It's clear what the user's opinion is here. Now say 1000 people do the same thing - Google could bring the 4th into the 1st place and the next 1000 people would probably find what they need first time.
SearchWiki cannot provide this kind of accuracy; people are only going to use it rarely and then probably with a bias. It may well become a factor in the ranking algorithm, but by no means a major one.
So, in short, not a lot will change. As long as you produce good content and design, and actively look to improve your conversion rate, these kinds of changes will probably help you by allowing Google to remove more rubbish from the index.
- Edward Bennett (Senior SEO, Edit Optimisation)
