SEO and Google SideWiki
Recently, Google released a new feature called SideWiki to add to their Internet browser toolbar. The goal of SideWiki is to allow users to input comments and share information about web sites all over the Internet. When visiting a site with the Google SideWiki toolbar enabled, a small blue arrow and comment icon appear to the left of your browser window. When clicked, SideWiki expands to reveal details about the current site and include comments shared by other toolbar users who entered comments.
Why should I care about SideWiki?
SideWiki allows anyone to comment on your site. This means that people can say what ever they want about your products and services. This is important for companies who want to maintain positive PR. It's also important that companies pay attention to what their customers are saying on SideWiki. It's likely that SideWiki users are early adopter types who's opinions can sway early majority customers to buy or ignore your products.
It's unclear as to what impact SideWiki will have on search engine optimization. It's likely SEO impact will be minimal, but could provide Google's algorithm with similar keywords customers are using to describe your products and services. If someone were to comment in SideWiki; "I really like their new Widget and use it every day." it's likely the mention of products will help add relevance to search results. It's unlikely that tons of spam SideWiki entries for "widget" will have any effect.
Have you downloaded SideWiki for your browser? What are your thoughts so far?
Why should I care about SideWiki?
SideWiki allows anyone to comment on your site. This means that people can say what ever they want about your products and services. This is important for companies who want to maintain positive PR. It's also important that companies pay attention to what their customers are saying on SideWiki. It's likely that SideWiki users are early adopter types who's opinions can sway early majority customers to buy or ignore your products.
It's unclear as to what impact SideWiki will have on search engine optimization. It's likely SEO impact will be minimal, but could provide Google's algorithm with similar keywords customers are using to describe your products and services. If someone were to comment in SideWiki; "I really like their new Widget and use it every day." it's likely the mention of products will help add relevance to search results. It's unlikely that tons of spam SideWiki entries for "widget" will have any effect.
Have you downloaded SideWiki for your browser? What are your thoughts so far?
posted by seanhecking at
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
5 Comments:
I DL'd it yesterday, snooped around and poked and tugged at it a bit. Main drawback (maybe just for me) is that it seemed to disable my ability to type anything in the URL field.
Did not like that *at all*. Uninstalled it. Ability came right back.
strange. they must not have all the bugs worked out yet.
There are definitely a lot of bugs to be worked out with Sidwiki, but there Troubleshooting page reveals some interesting insights into how brands, especially regulatory-sensitive brands in the pharma industry, may potentially be able to limit how Sidwiki integrates into their sites.
For example (from the Sidewiki troubleshooting page http://twurl.nl/y6bfxt ) :
"The Sidewiki button will appear grayed-out when comments are unavailable for a specific page."
One reason why Sidewiki comments are unavailable:
"The page you're on is a secure or internal page
Sidewiki currently does not support comments over internal or SSL (https) encrypted pages."
Obviously, SSL encrypted pages are not indexed by search engines, so if brands were to make more of their pages SSL encrypted in an effort to keep Sidewiki comments from their pages, they'd sacrfice their SEO rankings and lose a main source of low-cost site traffic.
The key word in the quote above is "currently", and it's still too early to know how Sidewiki will ultimately impact both brands' ability to control it and it's wider impact on SEO.
I hope Google works out the bugs sooner rather than later, and provides more clarity on how it affects their algorithm.
Thanks for a great post Sean. I look forward to hearing more of your SEO thoughts on Sidewiki!
Ian
Ian
More articles on Google Sidewiki:
http://searchenginewatch.com/3635252
Ian,
Thanks for the comment. It would be nice to see Sidewiki somehow integrated into Google Webmaster Tools.
Even if a site has HTTPS (SSL) enabled, it should have pages accessible to search engines. Only checkout or account pages would get blocked. It looks like Google is still trying to figure out how best to handle secure sites.
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