Danny Sullivan has a comprehensive look at Google’s new SideWiki feature to Google toolbar and site reviews.
He has also been using it to add some commentary on various sites as you can see from his Google profile.
This Google search query shows pages being indexed
They are not blocked in Google’s robots.txt currently
Google Sidewiki in Google Search Results
Just a bunch of questions off the top of my head to research
- Will this prove useful for parasite SEO?
- How will shill comments be policed?
- There is an API, that seems like it is calling out to allow comments to be imported as content
- Who owns the license to comments left on your site in this way?
- Can you use comments for content elsewhere?
- Does Google join the dots of your Social Graph for other trust factors?
- Do links to your own Google profile count such as mine for Andy Beard though note that it is the 11th result, and at least for me only appears on US listings.
- Does Google Friend Connect play a factor in your profile authority with Google Sidewiki?
- If we click on more Adsense ads do we get a boost? How about more Adwords spend? Surely at least the existence of a credit card attached to an account shows that it is a real person
What do you think, have you tried it? Working on a WordPress plugin?
31 Comments
I think we are going to see Google doing some really fun stuff in the very near future. They have halted a lot of projects since the recession really started but I have been seeing signs that they are start to let things get out there now. Should be interesting to see how it all pans out.
Yeah, I just wish they would focus a little more resources on Feedburner & Google Reader (on things like authentication and preventing sharing)
I agree I think Google will be rolling out all kinds of things over the next year. They are starting to feel the pressure from Facebook and that should drive some innovation at big G. Facebook is really turning up the heat with Facebook Connect and OpenStream.
The SideWiki looks like a good concept but I think it will be difficult to get the average searcher to use it.
Evan
What I keep wondering is whether SideWiki is going to be incorporated in Chrome or Google OS. Otherwise the group of people with IE and Google Toolbar is not too big.
I am assuming it will become available, though it is already possible to visit the framed pages from a link or search result
I’ll be really interested in the results of testing this out. I’m going to give it a go myself.
Sorry to be on a different subject. Is the new theme Theses?
Replies in a tweet as well, but just dropped my Functions.php for a while while changing things around a bit – it is just unmodified Thematic for now
There is an API, that seems like it is calling out to allow comments to be imported as content
Hey Andy, I see some spam slipping in the comments above… anywhow.. with regards to sidewiki, I’m most interested in the api and importing the content to my own site where the comments belong. We’ll have to see how Google deals with that.
You should see how many I still have to delete after removing Disqus, and find some way to recover comments Disqus thought were spam that are not in my database.
The API is certainly interesting
Something I mentioned on Twitter is how popular an affiliate link with a coupon would be, a little bonus for those that read the comments
SideWiki is a good idea to get a users input on articles and topics. However, getting a link off of Google from SideWiki probably won’t help much with rankings. It’s an overall factor.
“Quick Google! Disallow those pages!”
It is easier to get a link from Google for Payday loans that might be seen by people and possibly assist with indexing than it is from my comments.
I’ve played around with SideWiki for awhile… searching on popular (and expensive) keywords. Seems like there’s an awful lot of SPAM filling the sidebar. Unfortunately, if the only people who know how to use the product are SEO’s and uber-geeks, they’re going to get a ton of trash.
They will get a lot of trash, but in theory their reputation system is meant to control it – you will see Danny has a ton of Google reputation with his comments appearing highly where he has commented e.g. the Twitter home page
Also of not you can use Sidewiki to annotate a text selection, a bit like the Yahoo UI demos from a couple of years ago.
Andy, a few warriors are steaming mad about sidewiki, he is one of them
http://domainingdiva.com/legal-issues/google-is-evil/
I was wondering your thoughts on this?
Are they being over dramatic , just selling me something or maybe they have a valid point?
Yeah I have been following Paul Myers and Sylvie Fortin’s stance on this
http://www.marketersboard.com/google-sidewiki-controversy/
In many ways I find it similar to the scripts from a couple of years ago that allowed you to place a popup opt-in box on someone else’s sales page.
We know it is something that can be gone, but it is right to do it… maybe even evil… on the popups the lawyers were saying that it might be illegal, even though you might be doing it to increase sales though your own links.
If you see the spa problem Sylvie highlights, I think that will be the death of Sidewiki
Think about what Google is doing in the big picture of things. Google Friend Connect, Google Wave (I’m a beta dev tester) and then think about how it all integrates together. Google is not running about pulling one piece of junk after another out of their butts to chase Facebook. They started writing the code for Gwave in 2007. Google has been putting together their social framework for a long time.
But Facebook is about Facebook, Google’s stuff is about us and our sites, or so we see it around here. Think about how the comments can be seen on our profiles without the need for even a Google account and the links go back to our sites. Not thru a Facebook warning screen.
This is just another small piece of what will be the dominant social machine we will all be using on the web for a long time. Don’t worry about the fact the comments don’t appear on your site, it has an API and it is only a matter of time before Google Friend Connect comments and Sidewiki entries all can be seen on your site thru that API. Plugins can’t be far behind….
Those that complain they can’t moderate what others say, say much more about their content. I almost never have to moderate comments on my blog. Just spam and Google has been watching that game for a long time.
I hope for nothing but the best for Sidewiki, it is about us, not the site, not the social platform, it is about the topic and the conversation just like Google Wave (Gwave) is.
There is a bigger picture, we will eventualy find out which signals Google will use in other areas of their business
Google seems to be making a big push to control the 2nd click advertising revenues from their SERPS with SideWiki and Places.
Places isn’t meant to be indexed – Google leave it to everyone else to create indexed mashups ;)
Sidewiki becomes very interesting if they extend it to support Google Wave discussions etc Google didn’t include Twitter ;)
It is interesting how the Goog is integrating all of its various properties. It’s also kind of funny that this doesn’t yet work with Google’s own browser, Chrome. Strange. I like how Google Profiles is a key component of SideWiki and that idea of people having their own PageRank. That could be huge. It could actually compel the people of the internet to be more thoughtful and intelligent and not just say “This page sucks.”
I think it’s a good think but google should think how to integrate in an easy way its service. Often we have a lot of services but we can’t use them in a proper way becuase lack of information on how to use…
It is pretty well integrated, just download their toolbar with Sidewiki support.
Yeah “Google search query shows pages being indexed”which is very much helpful for seo purpose.
Google’s new SideWiki Toolbar make the work easy and in very quick time.just download their toolbar and make the work easy.
may i ask is feedburner really helpful. I tried it but to no avail. thanks
It is one of the worst options for email subscriptions, and you haven’t got it set up correctly for RSS – just use a plugin to set it up with WordPress
Here’s my prediction. Google will be forced to reduce the relevance of Sidewiki results for natural search. Otherwise, the black hat community will simply start selling Sidewiki spam. Or maybe I should start leaving negative comments on competitor sites with a clean Google account. There are so many ways to abuse this, it’s not even remotely funny. If Google starts floating these results to the top, they’re going to get sued, and fast. This – sidewiki in natural results – will not last. Mark my words.
This is all part of Google’s major land grab and it absolutely detracts from the efforts of website owners. Just like Facebook, Google would dearly love to BE the internet, where they are the gatekeepers to everything beyond (many would say they’ve already done that – “Just Google It!”).
The huge sites on the net are rapidly becoming the equivalent of the multinational conglomerates before the crash, all powerful and answerable to virtually no-one. Those of us producing new sites are reduced to ‘the longtail’ because there is almost no way of generating enough authority within a single lifetime to do much more.
All of the biggest sites now are what could generically be called social media sites – they empower rather than inform; we’re rapidly moving from the Information Age to the Empowerment Age. That has huge implications for us producing any kind of site from hereon.
Hi,
its nice to read, i think sidewiki is not a good tool and many people will use it to push their sites or told bald about other sites.
You can register many account on google and so i mean its not good for internet.
Wish you all good business and have fun in internet.
Best regards
Andre
I really don’t know how I feel about SideWiki just yet. It’s still very new although I remember their being quite an uproar about it just as it launched.
One one hand, I see it as an evil tool for spammers to divert traffic and competitors to degrade your web properties through negative/untruthful comments. And on the other hand, it is a way for users to communicate their ideas/opinions about a website to others.
The thing is, in both cases this SideWiki is manipulating websites without the webmaster’s control. I’ll have to wait and see as to what stance I’ll be taking – for or against SideWiki. Nonetheless, I think that trust should play a major role in the comments posted through SideWiki.