Inspired by the mechanism of small-world phenomenon, some smallworld optimization operators, mainly including the local short-range searching operator and random long-range searching operator, are constructed in this paper. And a new optimization algorithm, Small-World Optimization Algorithm (SWOA) is explored. Compared with the corresponding Genetic Algorithms (GAs), the simulation experiment results of some complex functions optimization indicate that SWOA can enhance the diversity of the population, avoid the prematurity and GA deceptive problem to some extent, and have the high convergence speed. SWOA is shown to be an effective strategy to solve complex tasks.