Wikia Wants to Shake Up Search

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A Search for Community

Wales is banking on the sense of community that has built Wikipedia into a popular, if flawed, source of information on the Web. "Wikipedia started with nothing and steadily built an audience over six years to become the No. 8 Web site on the Internet," he says. "An audience will stay if they have a sense of ownership, which is what we're providing with the search project."

Wikia Search will foster community by letting users build Facebook-esque profiles to forge ties to people with common interests. The engine will also use wikis, the online collaboration tools, to publish brief Wikipedia-like articles along with search results. "I have an understanding of what is important to community," Wales says. Wikia Search also will take pains to combat the spam that can plague search engines that rely on user input, empowering the Wikia Search community to block troublesome users from placing content.

Still, Wales says it may take at least two years for the engine to reach the standard set by Google and competitors such as Yahoo! (YHOO) and Microsoft's (MSFT) search tool. That may be too long for impatient Web surfers, says Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of the Search Engine Land Web site. "If it doesn't come through the first time—that's it," he says. "People won't go back again when there are so many other options."

Hard to Break the Google Habit

The most popular of those options, of course, is Google. "Quitting Google is like quitting smoking," Sullivan says. "It's a habit that's hard to break, and people don't want to break it." The Mountain View (Calif.) company had 57.7% of U.S. searches in November, according to Nielsen//Net Ratings. The closest rival was Yahoo, with 17.9%. "I don't think [Wikia Search will] reach a meaningful market share in the foreseeable future," says Snap.com's McGovern. "In an industry valued at a lot of money, a 5% market share would be terrific, but I think that's going to be very difficult to do."

What it lacks in share, Wales hopes Wikia Search will make up for in influence. Already, Google has taken a page from Wikipedia with its plan to introduce Knol (BusinessWeek.com, 12/14/07), an online tool that gives users an incentive to pen authoritative articles on a given subject. The giant is by no means injured, but it may well be paying attention.

Burnsed is an intern for BusinessWeek based in Atlanta.