Wikia Search, pitched by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales as a Google killer when it launched in January 2008 is no longer.

Wales wrote in a post that Wikia Search “has not been enjoying the kind of success that we had hoped” and then blamed the economy for the demise.

Wikia Search failed to find an audience, which in turn meant that it failed to establish a credible search index. The idea was to take Wikipedia crowd sourcing to search, so search results were edited and inserted by users. Things started to look bad in August last year, when Wikia launched a toolbar that allowed users to scrape results from Google; as I wrote at the time, providing a tool that encourages users to use a competing search engine (one that was claimed would be killed) reeked of desperate times.

Wales says that he may return to search again in the future, but we wouldn’t count on that being any time soon.

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The toolbar inserts an add button and rating tool next to Google search results on Google:

Wikia Evolution pushes the envelope even further. It allows you to quickly and easily add the web page you are on into Wikia Search, directly from your browser, for whatever keyword is appropriate. Instant indexing! Then, you can modify the search result to make it really killer, all without leaving the page you’re on.

Apparently it’s all about empowering anyone to change search results

Letting everyone modify search results pages is of fundamental importance — but you can’t on either Google or Yahoo. We can’t change that, sadly, but Wikia Evolution does the next best thing. Using Wikia Evolution, you can add and rate URLs directly from Google or Yahoo, and those contributions will be immediately incorporated into Wikia Search.

Let me get this straight: a search engine has launched a tool that encourages you to use other search engines. Second, a search engine, that is priding itself on being “different” and “user-generated” is making it easier for users to rip search results from other search engines, the very results they’re pitching themselves against to start with. Clever really, isn’t it. Can’t get enough volume in user generated suggestions, so go to where the people are, which is not your search engine, hoping that you can use the wisdom there to improve your number of indexed sites, perhaps creating the better product that might then result in people using it, despite the fact you’re toolbar is focusing them on Google. Credit to Jimmy Wales and Wikia, they’re always good for something new and different.

(via CenterNetworks)

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1. Wikia Search finally canned
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3. “Democratic” Search Engine Unveils Improvements