"Logical But Flawed" was about the kindest subhead I could use for a Google SideWiki Review; "From The Company That Brought You No Follow" was another that came to mind, as well as "The Death Of Adwords" or even "Google Reaches The Tipping Point". I'll go through each option as I review this very disruptive new introduction to the internet.

To say that the new Google SideWiki has thrown up a s***storm of protest would be an understatement but the development is also entirely logical from the Googlecentric view of the online universe.

There is that old philosophical question, "Does a tree actually fall in the forest if there's no-one there to hear it?". You could paraphrase that to, "Does a beautiful view actually exist if there's no-one there to see it?" or, "Can a book be well written if no-one ever reads it?". In the real world the answer is obviously yes, but to Google something is only of value if it is experienced by others (specifically "others who matter" - the so-called 'authority sites' - the 'quality' of the viewer matters more to Google than the number of people actually doing the viewing).

<- Richard Cranium (geddit?) commenting on Google SideWiki's own home page

That very concept is the basis of Google PageRank - a page is only of value or worth if it is linked to by others. What is actually on the page is of very secondary importance in how pages appear in the search listings. In fact even as recently as 2008 I was able to get completely blank pages ranked #1 in the SERPS just on the basis of incoming link text alone. You can't do that now after the 'Google Link Bombing' update, but the fact that it was ever possible to do it at all shows how deeply flawed the concept of PageRank actually is.

Why PageRank is used in the first place is based on a current limitation of computing software - computers on their own can't actually tell whether a page is well written or just Markoved garbage. However it goes beyond just that - Google is stating in its view that EVEN IF something was the best written and presented piece on the subject concerned it would have LESS value than something else that was much more poorly written but seen and approved more times by THOSE THAT MATTER.

It is a variation of Francis Galton's "Wisdom Of Crowds" - the most accurate assessment of anything is most likely to come from the greatest number of people making that assessment. In his case it was guessing the weight of an ox at a county fair (the average of the individual guesses was closer to the ox's true butchered weight than the estimates of most crowd members, and also closer than any of the separate estimates made by cattle experts). In Google's more elitist view it is only really the value of the experts' guesses (the authority sites) that counts rather than the crowd as a whole, but then we're looking at a company that, by its very makeup, can probably only understand the elitist or experts' view.

SideWiki is really a very natural extension of PageRank, only this time it does away with the elitist view as being the only one that matters. This time everyone has the right to comment and all comments count (provided they're 'on subject'). It's like moving from the university don's assessment of a final year thesis (PageRank) to the viewers' vote on American Idol, only this time all you need is a free Google Account to make your vote count rather than having to make a costly premium rate phone call.

Those in the know should not have been surprised by SideWiki's appearance on the scene - SearchWiki introduced in November 2008 allowed a similar kind of functionality ("Google's experiment that allows users to vote and annotate search results is back and this time it has a name: Google SearchWiki").

SideWiki is a much more disruptive technology though because this time it's not just a question of defacing Google search results - which is their prerogative - but of defacing owners' sites on their own domains. Anyone with a Google Account can now post a completely unmoderated comment about you and your site and it will automatically appear alongside the page concerned (SideWiki comments are page specific) and there's nothing you can do about it (well there is actually, but I'll come to the pros and cons of the current solutions in a minute).

It's the equivalent of spending a couple million bucks doing up a hotel only to then put up a giant (and I mean huge) white billboard right alongside for previous guests to post their less than perfect experiences while the place was being done up. Would any sane business ever do that? Of course not, no matter how customer-centric they were, and Google, even in their most ivory tower moments, must surely be able to see that.

This view of SideWiki on an 800x600 screen (after the tabbed browser's been removed from the shot) shows just how much screen real estate it takes up

Without being political, but the analogy is relevant here, there is democracy then there is communism. Democracy allows groups of individuals to vote on a person or process and have their group choice hold sway; communism is where the group becomes the choice. Because of SideWiki's sheer size on the screen it is immensely disruptive to the whole viewing experience of a site - it's no longer just a commentary on the site; in a very real way it has become part of the site and a part that the individual site owner has virtually no control over.

SideWiki is contained in the latest Google Toolbar update and whilst not yet available on Google Chrome soon will be an integral part of that browser as well. All you need to do to use it is log into your Google Account and click on the SideWiki cross on the toolbar - a tab on the left hand side of the page then offers the option for you to say whatever you like about the page you're on. All comments you make on all sites are then also viewable in your own account.

Epic Fail - comments on Page 3 of the SideWiki on the the Google Search Home Page (using a UK IP proxy) >>>

The complete irony of SideWiki is that Google was the very same company that introduced the No Follow tag to stop blog comment spam. Blog and CMS site owners go to great lengths to install Akismet and similar to stop comment spam. Now the very same company that brought you No Follow has done a complete 180 and introduced SideWiki, a spammer's dream tool. I have absolutely no doubt that there will be versions of XRumer and similar coming out very soon specifically designed to rapidly setup anonymous Google Accounts and then spam the heck out of SideWiki on pretty well every high traffic site on the net. Yes, comments have to be 'on topic' to be placed on the first page of comments but how difficult is it to come up with, "Yes, I love baking cupcakes but I love fake Rolexes even more. For the latest deals on cupcake related Rolexes go to http://.....". Or there's the micro-minded troll who has failed at everything he's ever done and just loves to place a negative spin on everything and everyone, or the customer you've refunded every penny to but who just has to relate their "terrible experience of your customer service" to the entire world.

I could go on but you get the point. There are a million and one places on the net that you can go to find comments on, and make comments about, any other site and service. Most of those comments you can find through the Google search engine. Not content with that though Google has now decided that your absolute width ecommerce web sites must now be scrunched into a corner whilst people place those exact same kinds of comments directly on your site as well.

Being an inherently positive person I always try to find the good in everything, but there is no good to be found in SideWiki. It completely duplicates a function that can already be found on the net, it effectively takes control of site content away from site owners and it will be abused to hell by every spammer out there. Worst of all, and I hate to even mention it in case someone in Google hasn't thought of it yet, but I have no doubt that the number (and quality) of comments on a particular page's SideWiki will soon become part of the overall search algorithm. On that basis those solutions currently coming out to block SideWiki may well ultimately be counterproductive.

For those of you prepared to live with it, site owners - and you have to prove through your Google Webmaster account that you are the site owner (don't have a Google Webmaster account - you'll have to now) - can place comments in SideWiki on their own pages, but what a major time suck. An even greater waste of time will be regularly checking to see who's said what and then placing rebuttals where necessary. Heck this is worse than communism, it's forced labor!

Google has finally reached a tipping point with SideWiki. Not merely content with aggregating web content for the purpose of search they are now trying to subvert and replace that very same content. Google Books is now a major source of content, as is Google Knol and Blogspot. SideWiki takes over a large part of the available screen space alongside EVERY page on the web. Google Wave will take over live content. Google is no longer content to find the story, it wants to be the story.

Ultimately this will show in shareholder returns. If ecommerce site performance suffers then advertising will fall with it and Adwords returns will drop. For the first time ever Google has just become the largest advertising company in a major economy - the UK. That trend will inevitably become global. If advertisers start to pull back from using Adwords, and online commerce altogether, then everyone, including Google, will suffer.

SideWiki is the kind of idea that a newly graduated G20-demonstrating student with a 24" cinema format Mac screen would come up with. For the rest of us it's a diversion at best, and a site killing lump of graffiti at worse.

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