Oh, It's Google's SearchWiki

I saw the new SearchWiki features in Google’s main search UI and thought something was going wrong with a Firefox plugin! In the past, Google’s main search page updates have been smaller and less feature addition, more interface tweak. This is a whole new deal. Watch the official video to see how the new features work.

Looking at all the comments on a search for “searchwiki” you can see some varied first reactions. User Brandon makes the frighteningly valid point, “Dude I can’t delete my comment.” The SearchWiki intro video makes it seem like you can leave private notes for yourself, but upon testing, the comments form submit button indeed reads, “Make a public comment.”

I’ve seen comparisons to Digg and of course Wikia Search, but this feature, in the path of searching, feels more like a Delicious-style addition since it’s useful to the user only if they return to the same search (Google claims that SearchWiki activity will not effect other users’ searches). In fact, Google will hopefully steal some other tricks from Delicious, such as private notes/comments. Better yet, I wish it were integrated with Delicious…oh, wait, right it was Microsoft that was supposed to buy Yahoo! Oh well…

One usability issue I noticed was that when you want to reorder the results, you can press the up-arrow icon to mark and move that result up. However, hitting the down-arrow icon un-marks the result and sends it to the bottom of the page. So, to reorder you can only move items up (imagine a Netflix queue like that!). The small line in the icon is probably too subtle to be understood by users and it is problematic combining the marking and reordering actions inconsistently. How about a star (like Google Reader) to mark the result and then the arrows for reordering (maybe with some ajax drag and drop love to sweeten it up)?

What do you think of this new googly googleness? Did it freak you out when you saw your good ol’ search page had changed? Will you even take the time to try it out?