Really? Then again, how does one measure success with SEO? Do you have to be #1 in search results for ALL the keywords you want? But that sounds impossible! How then do you measure if your campaign is successful?

In a nutshell: metrics. Sure, being number one in the rankings rocks, but metrics gives you a realistic peek at more important figures and numbers to let you know whether or not you are successful in your SEO endeavors. Are you ready to wallow in other numbers? Then read on.

Traffic – Though traffic is one way to check on the success of your endeavors, it is not the only way. Not only should you check how much traffic you have gained, also you must check the quality of these visitors. Do they just enter and leave? Do they explore the site? Knowing the quality of the visitors can give you an over-all insight how others see your site.

Keywords – “What?! But keywords aren’t numbers!” What you should take note is the way your keywords are performing. You should take note of the keywords that are directing traffic in your site. Are these the keywords you intended to use? Or are other keywords scoring more? Depending on the result, you can adjust your future keyword choices as you see fit.

Conversion Rate – This is the true test of an SEO campaign’s success. See how many people filled up the form you offer, or signed up for your newsletter, the results from this gives you the most concrete proof that SEO is working for you.

Free web analytics tools are available in the Internet. The things I have outlined above are just some of the basic metric information that you can glean from web analytics tools. With these tools, you can generate reports where you could check for improvement. Once you have done the optimization correctly, it won’t be long before you can really say that you’re SEO is successful. Only this time, you have numbers to back you up.

Search Wikia, a search engine developed by Wikia Inc., was launched in the alpha state last January 7. The uniqueness of the search engine stems from the fact that it is open source. Users are free to modify and adapt the software, search results, and other content compiled by the search engine. It allows users to vote upon individual results using 1 to 5 stars, and to flag results that the user finds inappropriate or irrelevant to the query, streamlining the search results even further. Also, it incorporates a social networking system alongside the search engine. It ties information about users and his friends along side search results.

Now let’s look at the itty gritty facts.

Looking at the “human powered” search engine, Search Wikia is quite a disappointment right now. A simple search such as “Arachnophobia” yielded only 212 results. You actually need to go down to 9 places before you get a result from a trustworthy site. The results from Search Wikia pales in comparison with Google’s 546,000 search results. With something more complex, Search Wikia fails to return any result at all. A search for “Oneirophrenia” returned zero results in Search Wikia, despite the fact that a website named www.oneirophrenia.com is available. Clearly, the search engine needs a lot of work right now.

Then there is the issue of the search engine being open source. Due to the transparency that they are offering, the ranking algorithms are visible to anyone who wishes to see it. The threat of spammers and hackers breaking the code and gaming the system is in the air. Not good if you are aiming to topple down Google in my opinion.

As for the social networking system, it’s just like every other social networking site out there. It asks for your profile, your interests and so on and so forth. Think of a really watered down social networking site crossed with a search engine, and you have Search Wikia.

All in all, it was an ambitious project. But the question remains, will it live up to the expectations that the hype created? Perhaps, but it’s certainly not today. Right now, when you need to search on something, Search Wikia would be at the bottom of your list. And you wouldn’t really use it right now for social networking. It needs a lot of work, especially in the indexing department, before anyone would even attempt to search something using it. They need to provide something new to the users before they adapt Search Wikia.