Wikia Search goes live but results are "pretty bad"

An alpha version of the Wikia search engine has been unveiled this week and, despite the hype surrounding its appearance, online commentary has been overwhelmingly negative.

Instead of arriving on the web pre-loaded with the complex algorithms required to run a search engine, Wikia Search relies primarily on users to contribute to the platform to increase its effectiveness.

Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikia Search, said: "This site, which we have been working on for a long time now, represents the first draft of the future of search."

Since its launch yesterday much debate has arisen surrounding its validity, potential to compete against search giants such as Google and Yahoo!, and its current performance.

The search engine also comes complete with several other functions, including a social networking site, and a 'miniarticles' function - a stub to a full Wiki page which appears above popular search terms.

The platform has attracted a substantial number of negative reviews in its first 24 hours online.

Wikia Search has so far been criticised for returning poor and inaccurate results but Wales has not rushed to its defence - calling the search results available at the moment "pretty bad".

Wales said: "We are aware that the quality of the search results is low, Wikia's search engine concept is that of trusted user feedback from a community of users acting together in an open, transparent, public way. Of course, before we start, we have no user feedback data."

Wales went on to encourage users post "bug reports" through a link provided on the page as the best means of improving searches at this stage, saying in the coming weeks Wikia expect the results to "improve rapidly".

Marcus Browne writes for ZDNet Australia