Wikipedia has launched a new search tool called
WikiSeek. WikiSeek is an improved search tool for Wikipedia. Michael Arrington at TechCrunch
reports that WikiSeek also indexes websites that Wikipedia links to. If the new search engine becomes heavily used it may give a traffic boost to websites linked from Wikipedia.
WikiSeek is a search engine that has indexed only Wikipedia sites, plus sites that are linked to from Wikipedia. It serves two purposes. First, it is a much better Wikipedia search engine than the one on Wikipedia (and has been built with Wikipedia’s assistance and permission). Second, the fact that it also indexes sites that are linked to from Wikipedia means that, presumably, it will return only very high quality results and very little spam. It won’t show every relevant result to a query, but it will certainly give a good overview of a subject without all the mess.
The search results also include a tag cloud which contains Wikipedia categories containing the search term. Results can be quickly filtered by clicking on one of those categories (see screen shot, click for larger view). The first three results of a query are always Wikipedia content (unless there are not three results) and are shaded blue. The remaining results are below the shaded area.
Michael Arrington also says that WikiSeek is going to confuse some people expecting Wikiasari, a new search engine in the works from Wikipedia creator Jimmy Wales. More about Wikiasari
here and
here. The fact that Wikipedia has a second search engine offering a better way to search Wikipedia that is not on the Wikipedia website may also confuse people.
