Google Goes More Social – Introducing Google Sidewiki

Google added a new feature called Sidewiki to their toolbar. With the help of sidewiki, users will be able to add their comments about  the page they are visiting. This comment can be anything like more information about the topic, link from blog which is discussing the same topic, an insight on history of something and more…

According to Google Blog, sidewiki will help new users find interesting information about the page. According to them:

We’re launching Google Sidewiki, which allows you to contribute helpful information next to any webpage. Google Sidewiki appears as a browser sidebar, where you can read and write entries along the side of the page.

I won’t go into details on how you can use it. Here is a detailed post by Danny Sullivan from SearchEngineLand on Google Sidewiki which will show you how to use it and how you can add comments on other sites.

Now, as an SEO Expert, the first thing that came to my mind after reading about SideWiki is how can I improve my client’s website ranking using this feature, or can I post negative reviews on my client’s competitior’s website and improve my client’s ranking?? Google is smart enough to cover this loophole. They have got an algorithm to decide which comments to show and which comments should show up first. Here is from the official Google blog:

In developing Sidewiki, we wanted to make sure that you’ll see the most relevant entries first. We worked hard from the beginning to figure out which ones should appear on top and how to best order them. So instead of displaying the most recent entries first, we rank Sidewiki entries using an algorithm that promotes the most useful, high-quality entries. It takes into account feedback from you and other users, previous entries made by the same author and many other signals we developed.

Google is going more social this way after introducing searchwiki. This feature makes me compare it with facebook. Its almost similar; e.g. on facebook poeple share links of their interest with their friends, office colleague where as on sidewiki, Google uses google profiles to track the user reviews. So, Google is threatened from Facebook and other social media sites? Let me know in comments what do you think this sifewiki feature means to facebook?

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