Wikia Search is now live at http://alpha.search.wikia.com/.

Honestly, it seems very lacking - I guess that is why it is an alpha launch?

There has been a lot of pressure to launch Wikia Search. Jimmy Wales promised an early launch and then promised to launch this week and here we have it.

Let's look at one search, although, I have been disappointed with many.

A search on george bush returns a blank "mini article" result at the top. Our president returns a blank mini article? The search results themselves return:

(1) George Bush Is A Crackwhore!
(2) A blogspot result at http://george-bush-gulf-war.blogspot.com
(3) Then this http://www.george-bush-pics.com/

The image results at the top right for people matching on George Bush is just sad.

Here is a screen capture of those results today. Sad.

Hey, but Wikia admits the results are sad. As they say on their about us page:

We are aware that the quality of the search results is low.

Right now, the most important thing you can do is help with the "miniarticles" that appear at the top of popular search terms. These will vary in purpose according to the circumstance, but the primary uses will be:
* Short definitions
* Disambiguations
* Photos
* See also

Michael Arrington wrote Wikia Search Is A Complete Letdown and you can find a lot more coverage at Techmeme.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Search Engine Watch Forums.

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