Search by the few and for the many is now here. Sort of. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, who made headlines when he announced his plans to topple Google's search dominance, has launched a beta version of Wikia, a search engine that ranks results based on adjustments made by its users.

In an interview with The Financial Times, Wales said he plans to build a "freely licensed, open-source search engine," that is more transparent than Google.

According to Wales, Wikia will be a slow evolution because it relies on human input for relevancy.

A query for the term "Obama" highlighted the early drawbacks of the search engine. While Google delivered predictable results, with the candidate's official site and news stories about the campaign taking the top few slots, the Wikia search yielded Asian-language websites at the top of the page. Obama's official Senate page – the only relevant result in the top three – finished third.

While poor results are to be expected for a beta search engine, TechCrunch blasted the site as a "complete letdown," pointing out that the lack of human functionality on the page could sink Wikia.

Wikia CEO Gil Penchina said Wikia will add more tools for humans to make adjustments as the search engine develops. But presently, Wikia users can only create profiles and add keywords to indicate areas they're interested in.

Unlike Wikipedia, Wikia is a for-profit venture. Wales said he plans to monetize the search engine by selling ads. But for now, the site remains something of an experiment.