Wikia finally launches their public alpha of Wikia Search. For the most part, I’m impressed with what I’m seeing. The home page is very clean and aesthetically pleasing.
The search engine has incorporated a human touch in the search results by providing people that match keyword searches.
I was able to make myself appear on certain search results by including those keywords on my profile page. When you enter your Personal Information, you enter it in keyword phrase style, always separated by commas. Then, those keywords relate your profile to related searches. It looks a bit awkward, but it seems to make enough sense.
The success of Wikia Search will no doubt be dependent on their ability to weed out spam and artificially influenced results. It will also depend on the usefulness of their results. Unlike Wikipedia, Wikia Search will be entering the ever changing and extremely complex world of algorithm tweaks and intense user discourse. Which is why I’m sure they opted for the terminology of “alpha” instead of “beta” for their initial launch.