The power of Google’s custom search, which has been available to webmasters for around three years, is now to be found on Wikipedia.

It’s common for Wikipedia to be used for research purposes now, despite the occasional curveballs it throws out, and now Google’s search technology should make it easier to find relevant information more quickly.

A key feature is contextual search which only considers pages that are linked to a particular Wikipedia entry. This is great when a word has multiple meanings, as it helps to sift out irrelevant information.

The new search technology isn’t switched on by default, but can be enabled by following instructions on Wikipedia’s Custom Search skin page.

Hopefully this change will make Wikipedia even more useful.

Via

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