"We have been testing bits and pieces of SearchWiki for some time through live experiments, and we incorporated much of our learnings into this release," said Product Manager Cedric Dupont and software engineer Corin Anderson in a blog. "We are constantly striving to improve our users' search experience, and this is yet another step along the way."

Personalized Search

Search aficionados can now add, remove and rearrange results as well as comment on individual listings, noted the program's lead engineer, identified only as Amay.

"Every time you do that search while logged in to your Goggle account, you'll see your custom-tailored search results," Amay explained. If the user is unsure about being signed in, he or she can check by noting if the appropriate user name appears in the upper right-hand area of the page, he said.

Click on the up or down arrows that appear next to individual search results to move a listing to the top or bottom of the page. The arrows for moved individual entries are subsequently displayed in green.

Listings that do not specifically pertain to the user's search requirements can be removed by clicking on the delete box located to the right of the entry. The deleted listings, which the user can hide by clicking on the tab provided, will be displayed at the bottom of the list.

To make a favorite site always show up for a particular search term, the user can enter its URL in the "add a result" box at the very bottom of the page. To see all the changes that have been made for a particular search query, click on the "see all notes for this Searchwiki" link.

Aggregated Comments

Logged-in users can even append comments to individual listings. "Say you want to leave yourself notes about a site," Amay said. "Just click on the icon to open a text box, type in your comment, and it will be there every time the site appears in your search results."

These customized notes will only affect the user's personalized search-results pages, Amay noted. "Your changes won't change the way others see their own search results and you will only see your own changes when you are logged into your Google account," he said.

SearchWiki users have the ability to see what other users think about any search query by clicking on the "All notes for this SearchWiki" link at the bottom of the search page. The link presents an aggregated view of which pages have been moved up, deleted or added, together with the comments users have added for specific sites.