Google today released a new version of their toolbar, including a sneaky little feature called Sidewiki that allows users to leave comments on any page on the web.  As noted by Techcrunch, it’s not an original idea; many others have tried this model, but none have succeeded.  Google has an advantage here because they are attaching the feature to their toolbar, which already has a significant userbase, but the idea still has significant challenges.

We know that people are generally motivated by fortune or fame, and Knol – Google’s last failed UGC attempt — offered fortune and fame, but failed anyways.  Sidewiki offers neither.  There’s no monetary aspect to Sidewiki at all, and you’ll only gain fame among the few other people who actually decide to turn their Sidewiki sidebar on for that particular page (Sidewiki comments only show up on the page they were added to, and do not show up across an entire site.)

So why would Google put this out there?  Because if anyone uses it at all, it gives them meta data to improve their web search.  Nothing helps Google classify a page more than text on or about a page, and by giving users one more venue to leave comments, they are looking to improve their ability to index and classify those pages.  PaidContent quotes Google’s product manager saying:

“It gives (people) a reason to come back to a page.  I’m sure some publishers will have some objections to something like this but (at the same time) many traditional publishers also objected to blogs.”

Firstly, publishers put comments on their sites “to give people a reason to come back,” so why do they need some parallel comment system that gives them no SEO benefit?  They’d be better off adding Disqus.  Second, how are blogs analogous to Sidewiki?  Sidewiki sits on the side of any page like a leech, taking conversation away from the actual page, while blogs are just independent publications that traditional publishers have no right to object to.  A more suitable analogy would be the framing of sites that publishers have objected to for years because they lose visibility into what people are saying about their site.

I’m not saying that publishers should protest this move, but it’s disingenuous of Google to position this as a service they’re providing for the betterment of the web.  They’re providing it to benefit themselves, just like the Google Image Labeler, which looks like a game but really powers Google’s image search, and their recent acquisition of Recaptcha which is a security tool that also happens to aid their book digitization efforts.

I tried out Sidewiki, and of course there isn’t much out there yet.  All I found was a self-proclaimed “Social Media Specialist” who provided a brief summary of CNN on CNN.com’s homepage.  If Google had provided the Wikipedia page for CNN, it would have been better.  Sidewiki would probably be more useful for the long tail pages of the web that could use some elaboration, but that’s exactly where it’s unlikely to be viewed because users have to explicitly open their Sidewiki window to look for comments that have been left.

I can see the system quickly becoming full of spam, self-promotion, and random chatter.  Google provides user ratings, saying it will help the good comments filter to the top, but 1) that will disrupt the order of responsive comments which are sure to arise and 2) it will be gamed because there are no moderators overseeing the system.  Wikis are powerful because they have moderators, and this system will fail in the long run because it has none.

To wrap up, I wouldn’t bother using Sidewiki – it will linger for a year or two like most of Google’s social media efforts, and when Google sees that the comments they are getting are spam and conversation, they’ll realize it’s not helping their index, and they’ll shut it down.