A search bar is pretty much a requirement to put an engine in front of users' faces, so this is an expected move by the Wikia Search project. But Wikia Evolution moves the concept into new territory.

Wikia Search has so far been criticised for returning poor and inaccurate results, but rather than rushing to its defence, Wales has called the search results available at the moment "pretty bad ...

Contributions are reflected immediately and don’t go through an approval process. With WISE, Wikia Search wants to automate this participation. “We’ll get a whole new level of user-built search.

Wikia (and Wikipedia) co-founder Jimmy Wales believes that it's necessary for the public to take control of search, which he sees as a shared need and thus a shared resource.

Wales has started to invite a handful of people to test an early version of the search platform, which will be publicly launched on Jan. 7, he wrote in an email to the Wikia mailing list Monday.

News Wikia Search, Cuil Trailing Google by a Long Shot By Dan Nystedt Aug 18, 2008 9:20 pm PDT ...

Wikia Search, a search engine that will use human input to answer queries, will get a test launch Jan. 7.