Wikiseek

Infobox Website
name = Wikiseek



caption =
url = [http://www.wikiseek.com/ www.wikiseek.com]
commercial =
type = search engine
language = English
registration = no
owner = SearchMe
author = SearchMe
launch date = January 17, 2007
current status = Inactive
revenue =
slogan =
alexa = >300,000 [cite web | url=http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/wikiseek.com | title=wikiseek.com - Traffic Details from Alexa | accessdate=2008-02-24]

Wikiseek was a search engine that indexed Wikipedia pages and pages that were linked to from Wikipedia articles. The search engine was founded by Palo Alto based internet startup SearchMe and was officially launched on January 17, 2007.citeweb|url=http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/01/16/wikipedia-search-engine-wikiseek-launches/|title=Wikipedia Search Engine WikiSeek Launches|accessdate=2008-08-21|publisher=TechCrunch] Most of the funding came from Sequoia Capital.citeweb|url=http://www.informationweek.com/news/management/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=196901494|title=Wikipedia Gets Plug-In Search Engine|accessdate=2008-08-21|publisher=InformationWeek] It used Google ads on its search returns to generate profit. As of 2008 it is no longer active.

Wikiseek was granted permission by the Wikimedia Foundation to index the Wikipedia website.citeweb|url=http://searchengineland.com/070116-074812.php|title=Wikiseek: Leveraging Wikipedia For Web Search, Poorly|publisher=Search Engine Land] Wikiseek has made financial contributions to the Wikimedia Foundation, and TechCrunch reported that it was donating the "majority" of advertising revenue.

Wikipedia pages were re-indexed whenever Wikipedia had a database dump; external links were re-indexed weekly. Search results included tag clouds of Wikipedia categories that contained the search term. The first three results of any search would always be Wikipedia articles, and the remainder were a mix of Wikipedia content and websites linked to from Wikipedia. The service used user feedback to lower the occurences of spam.

TechCrunch commented that the search engine may cause confusion with the Wikia search engine that had been announced the month previous to Wikiseek's launch.

References

External links

* [http://www.wikiseek.com/ Wikiseek]
* [http://wikiseek.wikia.com/ Wikiseek Community Wiki]
* [http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/01/16/wikipedia-search-engine-wikiseek-launches/ TechCrunch Article]