Is Google going to be the end for SEO?

Some of you might have noticed or seen (if you were chosen as part of the bucket test) that Google is testing SearchWiki – a web 2.0 approach to search which allows users to rate search results, add comments to each result as well as view other user comments. Based on your rating of results, you can affect the positioning of SERP which means an organic result position 2 can be changed to 7 or 8 or removed completely.

Best of all, you can even add your own results via the URL and then move it up/down which means a result which would appear on page 4 organically can now be made to appear on page 1.

Although, at the moment, changes you make will only appear on your computer, I can’t help but think the whole point of this excercise from Google’s perspective is something more ‘grand’. Perhaps, applying principles of semantic search to learn from user ratings and creating new algorithms that will govern the future direction of how results and rankings are displayed.

For now it means that if your website is well optimised for Google your position within the SERP will appear as is. Until the user changes it. In the future this might mean that no matter how well your site is optimised, if users don’t like it, you are history. For Google anway.