Google makes searching easier with Sidewiki
By siliconindia   |   Thursday, 24 September 2009, 18:37 IST
Printer Print Email Email
Bangalore: Google has come up with meta comments engine which will let users leave comments on anything they search on Google. This comments engine is called as Google Sidewiki and will appear as a browser side bar. Google announced this through an official blog by Sundar Pichai, Vice President, Product Management and Michal Cierniak, Engineering Lead for Google Sidewiki. The blog says that many people are looking for the same thing on the internet and these comments will help them find what they are looking for in an easier way. "Whether you're researching advice on heart disease prevention or looking for museums to visit in New York City, many others have done the same and could have added their knowledge along the way. What if everyone, from a local expert to a renowned doctor, had an easy way of sharing their insights with you about any page on the web? What if you could add your own insights for others who are passing through?" said Pichai and Cierniak. Google Sidewiki can be very helpful for users but there is a chance that spammers will try to advertise through this as well. To tackle this problem Google will sort out the comments using an algorithm which will keep the relevant data on top. "Developing Sidewiki, we wanted to make sure that you'll see the most relevant entries first," the company said. "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," according to Google's official blog. Sidewiki is available on the Google toolbar with both Firefox and Internet Explorer and will soon be available on Google Chrome.

siliconindia