Google released an addition to their toolbar, called the SideWiki. The idea is that any person can contribute helpful information to any web page.
When you visit a page that has comments, the button on your toolbar will highlight and an expandable bar shows up on the left hand side. You can expand the bar to see what people have said about the page. People can add comments to entire pages, or they can select specific text to comment on. When they make comments they can share them with other networks like Twitter and Facebook.
It’s new still so there’s not too much activity yet. But knowing how popular Google is and how easy it is to use once installed, I think it has potential to catch on.
What does this mean for site owners?
Since all of this content lives within the Google toolbar, the site owners have no control to moderate what’s said. Google has built in some moderation from its side to prevent abuse but it’s debatable on how well they’ll be able to keep up with it.
There are some SEO and social implications involved in this. For one, every time a user makes a comment, that comment is saved to their Google profile page, with a link back to the web site. This could lead to increased pagerank for that site. And essentially, it means that every page is “social” by nature, whether or not that social activity occurs on the page itself or on the SideWiki. Since comments can be shared on other social networks it has the potential to spur conversations there as well.
What do site owners need to do?
I suggest that all site owners “claim their site” via SideWiki. When you’re the page owner, your comments will by highlighted with a green background, and will automatically stay on the top of the list of comments. The way to do this is:
- Download the SideWiki toolbar
- Make sure the Google account you’re using is the one you used to verify your site via Google Webmaster Tools
- Go to your page and click the sidebar to leave a comment
- Write something welcoming and informational about your page (you can provide links, instructions, etc)
- Select the box to “write as page owner”
Site owners should also monitor the activity occurring on their SideWiki. Each entry will link back to the profile of the person who left the comment – if there’s anything negative there that needs to be addressed, you can contact that person. Positive comments can be shared via Twitter or Facebook and also voted up.
I also suggest adding social tools to the site itself. It’s much easier for people to comment on the site, and they will do that intuitively over using the SideWiki. Then the conversations that happen on your site can be moderated and you can participate in it more fully.
Sitewire is available to help our clients with this process and SideWiki information will be included in regular social monitoring services. If you have any questions, please contact us.
