The folks behind the amazing user-generated encyclopedia Wikipedia, have just launched a new search engine based on a similar premise: user-generated search results should be better than results compiled by a bunch of robots. Sounds interesting, promising even, so I thought I would put it to the test. : )

The challenge: search for "pattycake.ca" using the term "pattycake" on Wikia, and compare results with Google, Yahoo!, Live Search, Ask, and a smaller player called IceRocket. The reason I chose this term is because I built and maintain Pattycake.ca, my wife's healthy baking and lifestyle blog, and we often check our search ranking against the "Sexy Pattycake" adult website, a children's singer/entertainer known as "Miss Pattycake", the perpetually-under-construction "Pattycake.com", and a bakery in the US called "Pattycake Vegan Bakery".

So, how does Wikia fare against the competition...? Here are the results, in order of best to worst, with respective ranking (in page and overall order):

1. Yahoo! (p1/3rd)
2. Google (p1/4th)
3. Ask (p1/7th)
4. IceRocket (p2/18th)
5. Live Search (p6/55th)

So where's Wikia in the list, you may ask? Well, unfortunately it doesn't even make the list because it didn't find Pattycake.ca at all! Surprisingly, it only returned 95 results in total (compared to 691,000 for Yahoo!, 432,000 for Google, and 56,700 for Ask). And of those 95 results, I could only get 73 to actually display. Hrmmm...

So it would seem that the little gnomes at Wikia have some work to do before they'll be unseating any of the encumbants. But then again, that's the model. The search ~should~ get better over time, as more humans filter and finesse the results. Till then, unfortunately, it isn't worth using. And that's the problem: if nobody uses it, it won't get better. If it doesn't get better, nobody will use it. Doh!