Google recently launched SearchWiki and the news of its launch spread like a jungle fire, far and wide. The online community was rife with speculations and online marketers could feel the rush of adrenalin in their blood. As always, online marketing professionals were left asking themselves a very basic question, “Will this new feature alter or impact search engine optimization (SEO)?”

Google would have anticipated this and therefore laid extra emphasis while writing this – “The changes you make only affect your own searches.” This statement came as a breather for online marketers and to some extent subdued the speculations surrounding SearchWiki. However, the respite was only short lived.

Michael Arrington spoke to Marissa Mayers (Vice President of Search Product and User Experience at Google) and excerpts of the interview were posted at TechCrunch. She seems to have made a startling revelation which is in contradiction to what was initially posted on Google’s official blog post.

Mayer also talked about Google’s use of user data created by actions on Wiki search to improve search results on Google in general. For now that data is not being used to change overall search results, she said. But in the future it’s likely Google will use the data to at least make obvious changes. An example is if “thousands of people” were to knock a search result off a search page, they’d be likely to make a change.

* I have taken the liberty to highlight the relevant sentence.

The “obvious changes”, I would presume, refers to search engine rankings. If that would be the case, it would definitely make search engine rankings vulnerable to manipulations, something neither of us would want. Black hats would have a field day if Google goes ahead and implements the use of SearchWiki data to alter search results; it would only be a matter of time.

On the other hand, I am confident that Google has already preempted the “thousands of people” scenario and will implement effective counter-measures; a defense mechanism to fend of spammers trying to game the system. I am sure (I seem to be out of options) we can bank on Google for it!

I wanted to end my post on a positive note and therefore I intentionally kept this bit from you. Marissa Mayers also told that Google is “very likely” to add a ‘turn off’ button to SearchWiki. So if SearchWiki annoys the hell out of you, just shut it out. I can’t wait to have it.