Custom search site Swicki, just out of beta, combines cherry-picking site searches with social moderation features to make a theoretically smarter personalised search box. Like Yahoo's search builder or personal search granddaddy Rollyo, Swicki lets you pick topics and sites you want to look through, but has a few more tricks up its sleeve.

The main difference is that a Swicki uses the clicks, keywords and searches from other Swickis with similar interests to rank and sort results, rather than any Google-like system. It also relies on users' voting results up and down and removing them to train the widget on what to look for. Lastly, Swickis can display RSS, video, and multimedia content, and be embedded in blogs or web sites. Building a Swicki is free, but requires clicking through a few pages to complete the process. For you longtime search tweakers out there, do Swicki's results seem worth the overall effort? Share your experience with the site (and others like it) in the comments.

 

Tags: customisation | search | search engines | social | social search