Google Searchwiki & Microsoft URank

Just a week ago, Microsoft launched a new search engine U Rank that allows people to customize their search results.

U Rank can benefit users in the following ways, as outlined by Microsoft:

•  Create the perfect search results, by add images and video for added context.
• Organize and annotate results, by writing notes to summarize important information under each URL
• keep lists while you’re researching (e.g. “best restaurants for my next trip to New York”)
• Share URLs with friends, Recommend your friends what you like (“best hotels in Mumbai,” “favorite restaurants in Seattle”)
• Move your favorite sites up; then put an ! in front of the query and go straight to the top result.

Garett Rogers at ZDNet reports that Google is also planning to launch a very similar product called [/tag]searchWiki[/tag], which will give users the ability to control how search listings appear for certain searches. 

Google’s SearchWiki is in an experimental stage at present and runs on exactly the same principle as that of Microsoft’s URank, the only difference being is that it’s incorporated directly into Google’s core results page – not a totally independent search engine.

Google’s Searchwiki currently has a limited access to selected users. Justin Hileman is one of the privileged users who has access to Searchwiki. He has reported some of the screenshots of this experimental search engine at his blog.  When Google’s new personalization features will be available to the public, it is hoped that people will share pages of personalized search results much like they do bookmarks now.