Wales giving up on Wikia Search

adatta02 · on March 31, 2009

I'm sad to see the doors close on Wikia Search. I was an intern in the NYC office last summer. The project had a refreshingly open philosophy and was built using FOSS components.

At least the index is still available at http://index.isc.org/

thorax · on March 31, 2009

Yeah, I was a big fan of the idea. Clearly Google saw the potential, too.

I almost wish it wasn't a part of Google. I'd like to have two offerings that are totally different-- one that's 100% pagerank and one that trends towards user-ranked. Right now we're kind of losing out on the latter because Google isn't necessarily taking into account the user rankings across accounts.

michael_nielsen · on March 31, 2009

Doesn't look like the index is downloadable in any useful form. The links just lead to what appears to be a moribund mailing list.

breck · on March 31, 2009

I'm very surprised it's shutting down. 3M uniques a month and still growing according to Compete.

Seems like it would have gotten acquired at the very least.

smanek · on March 31, 2009

They aren't closing all of Wikia, just "Wikia Search" (which stagnated at 10K uniques/month).

breck · on March 31, 2009

Ah, thanks! That makes so much more sense.

ckinnan · on March 31, 2009

The article also mentions Microsoft is shuttering Encarta-- a victim of Wales' Wikipedia. Win some, lose some.

josefresco · on March 31, 2009

There's an opportunity here for a hacker with low overhead to move into this market of an 'open search engine'. It doesn't necessarily have to be 'user powered' but should be much more open than Google/Yahoo/MSN's mighty algorithms.

epi0Bauqu · on March 31, 2009

Any particular suggestions?

j2d2 · on March 31, 2009

I usually use google to search the wiki.

jgamman · on March 31, 2009

I guess they're just busy trying to avoid beaching themselves and trying to hear themselves think with all that ultra-low frequency sonar bouncing around these days. I mean, we all get a little User Generated Content fatigue now and again. Now imagine how hard it is to type with those really big flippers.