wikiseek.com for wikipedia
- By: The Founder [privmsg - website] On 16th Jan 2007 In
New Wiki Search Engine, Wikiseek.Com has launched. It claims to be a better way to search Wikipedia. It's filled with Adsense ads....
Quote:
About Wikiseek
The contents of Wikiseek are restricted to Wikipedia pages and only those sites which are referenced within Wikipedia, making it an authoritative source of information less subject to spam and SEO schemes.Wikiseek utilizes Searchme's category refinement technology, providing suggested search refinements based on user tagging and categorization within Wikipedia, making results more relevant than conventional search engines.
- Y! MyWeb
ad revenues
In fairness to them they do say:
Do a search for 'search engine optimization'
http://www.wikiseek.com/results.php?q=search+engine+optimization
Leads to the first result being a parked domain for sale by a spammer:
http://www.siteboxparking.com/-/?dp=www.visit-armagh.com&aid=40191
A better way to search wiki?
Who cares? Why does anyone need to search wikipedia using something other than the search feature that was already there.
Oh wait, I know....it's so they can run adsense ads and make money. The editors over there that are so anti-commercial are trying to slip one by, figuring it's time they made some money without looking like that's what they're doing (otherwise, just run the search without the ads).
This is a big non-starter as a search engine and only serves to show that the folks that crow the loudest about being non-commercial as if that's dirty, are happy to become commercial as soon as it suits their best interests.
Wikipedia Search feature is slow
I use Google to search Wikipedia. It's faster.
Spider
BTW, their spider seems to be "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Charlotte/1.0b; http://www.betaspider.com/)" from 209.249.86.4
I Don't Get It?
The plugin for Firefox and IE work just fine for searching wikipedia. Why would you want to go to another site to search Wikipedia when you have plugins that work just fine? I must be missing something?
This "search" site is a joke
Any search service based solely on the listings in Wikipedia is ridiculously outclassed by the professional search services. Their results are absolutely horrible.
At least the people at Microsoft can breathe a sigh of relief because now someone else has the "Kick me -- I'm the most miserable excuse for a search service" sign on their back.
And at least Microsoft has room for improvement. Wikiseek is trapped in the Unauthoritative Resource Zone.
wikipedia is in trouble? It
wikipedia is in trouble?
It sure seems bad.... the wikisorry thing, now this... it's like someone over there sees the writing on the wall and it says "Google will one day stop ranking you #1 for everything" with a smaller scribble underneath that says "if you're so successful, where's the money".
Wikisearch
sucks... end of comment
In the same way the Toprank
In the same way the Toprank SEO OPML has been used to make useful CSEs, the Wikipedia database could be used to create a CSE of Wikipedia plus linked sites.
I liked Danny's commentary, especially in relation to how DMOZ search used to work.
I think and have written on my blog that Wikipedia are taking the wrong approach, and in some way should provide an API with some kind of revenue sharing system.
An decent API might be a good alternative to scraping ;)