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It's hard to believe that anything is going to come after Google. After all, it's the biggest search engine on the planet, its shares are at levels that give investors wet dreams and it seems that there is just nothing that can beat it.

Webmasters in both mainstream and adult struggle day after day to get their websites to the top of Google's search results and an entire industry has sprung up based on nothing more than achieving those top search results for their clients. When you realize that last month Google accounted for 47.3% of all web searches it's no wonder that keeping on top of the Google game is such a big deal.

But Google isn't happy with that share of the search market, it wants more and in other search areas besides the general search area. Last year it launched Google Blog Search and entered a field where the only other real player - Technorati - had controlled the numbers for quite some time.

In less than a year it has overtaken Technorati in that field too. Hitwise suggests that Google began catching Technorati as early as October when it placed a blog search link on the Google News page. In just two weeks that link saw a jump of 168% in market share for Google and in December Google passed Technorati and has stayed in front ever since.

So if Google is so dominant in the field of Internet searches why should we even be thinking about any possible alternatives? Yahoo! has publicly admitted defeat when it comes to search, Live/MSN is gaining ground but every time it does so Google surges even further ahead and Ask is so far behind the game it may never catch up.

When you look at those competitors you see that there doesn't seem to be a chance of Google being beaten at its own game unless it shoots itself in the foot. While that isn't impossible and is becoming more likely every time they tweak their algo to make more money from search there is also a competitor who has a real chance of beating them that most of us haven't even considered.

That competitor is Wikipedia and there are some very positive signs that Wikipedia could become a serious contender for the search crow. Of course Wikipedia has its problems and there is a lot of garbage in those listings but the general public doesn't seem to care ... and nor does the media.

Despite the fact that there is no real guarantee that the information in Wikipedia is correct the media is beginning to quote Wikipedia as if it were source of all irrefutable knowledge. Data suggests that in the last year Wikipedia was quoted 11,000 times in the press and that is a 300% rise on the year before. And it's not just the press in the United States who is relying on Wikipedia, the press here in Australia occasionally quotes Wikipedia too.

Why are those figures important? Because every time the press quotes Wikipedia they name their source and people see that name in print and people associate the name with information. When they want information they go to the places that they trust to get that information and if the press trusts Wikipedia then they know they can trust Wikipedia too.

And people are trusting Wikipedia. The site might only be six years old but already Hitwise is suggesting that Wikipedia is the 20th most visited site in the United States and they definitely want to become even more relevant to anyone who is searching for information on the Web.

Wikiseek - wikiseek.com - was launched today to give people a very simple search interface for Wikipedia. Adding information to Wikipedia has often been a bit of a challenge too but now there is a WYSIWYG editor for people who want to add information to the site.

So perhaps Wikipedia is something that we need to be thinking about if we want to stay ahead of the game in marketing on the Internet. Of course we shouldn't be taking our attention away from Google any time soon but there is competition for Google on the horizon and we should be prepared for that.

Wikipedia does handle adult themes and a search for 'bisexual' on Wikiseek returned some interesting listings but obviously you will have to be creative to get some links onto Wikipedia in the first place. You will also have to take some care to ensure that they remain there too. But it can be done and Wikipedia will send you traffic - even now when it's only the 20th most popular site on the web.