Will SearchWiki Give Google Even More Personal Information?

Google has rolled out its SearchWiki project, allowing users to customize their searches based on their own preferences. The SearchWiki makes for a customizable search engine experience that also allows a curious Web browser to see what the community at large is saying about a particular search result.

Google's SearchWiki project, essentially, contains three new enhancements to any search a user performs. The most useful feature is the ability to customize the search result pages.

For example, say you regularly perform a search for Italian Restaurants in New York City. After doing the search three or four times you might realize that one of the results in particular is the most useful to you. With SearchWiki you can move that result from the four or five spot of the results page to the top. Conversely, if you feel that a search isn't relevant to what you're looking for it can be deleted.

While rearranging search results might be the most useful feature of SearchWiki, the community aspects are the most powerful. Google is allowing users to interact with one another in a community setting through search results, which, when you think about it, is an amazing community building feature.

The community effort from SearchWiki plays out in two ways. First, after performing a Google search, you can write a note about a result and attach it to the Website. That note -- along with any reordering you make the results -- will only appear to an individual user when they're logged in. Those notes can be uploaded to SearchWiki at large if you feel like sharing them with the community.

Those shared notes on search results are where the second aspect of the community feature comes into play. By clicking on the "See all notes for this SearchWiki" link on the Webpage, you'll then be plugged into the commentary, deletions and revisions that other users have made to the Websites assembled by that given search.

Now you're communicating with other users directly, getting their thoughts on an Italian restaurant in New York or seeing which online restaurant guide is the most or least useful.

The catch, as with what seems to be all things Google, is that you have to be logged into a Google account in order to access SearchWiki.

Is that a big deal? That depends.

Google is known for making a habit of hanging onto the personal information of its users. By editing search results, commenting and interacting with other search engine users, you might be giving Google more highly personalized information that the company could use to target ads at you more directly.

Think about your Gmail account: the ads served to you come directly from the content of those emails. Sometimes they get ignored, other times they get clicked on. But the fact of the matter is you're giving Google access to your personal information. By using SearchWiki, not only could you be providing information about yourself but you could also be giving the search engine giant access to personal preference.

But I can't say for sure. Google did not immediately respond to interview requests.