Example: I don't search for movies on Google. I search, obviously, at IMDB. I don't search for books at Google. I search at Amazon. etc.

There are still some unserved niches out there, that lack a dedicated, human-edited search engine.

At Bessed, we've changed our focus toward finding the "best websites" on any topic we cover, and many times we're covering topics that produce poor results when using Google. Example: a search for "Pelton & Crane Autoclave" produces Google search results that include the same company spamming the results under different domains. (An autoclave is like a medical sterilizer by the way.) Our page on this product eliminates this: Pelton & Crane Autoclave. Our goal is to cover everything, but in reality it seems our value proposition is to cover many of the more obscure searches and create pages that provide good lists of links, and then have those be indexed by Google and the others. The better we do at this, the more we can grow, but we can't compete head-to-head with Google on every search term.

I won't get into numbers, but when I look at the money our site generates and I extrapolate that out to a site like Mahalo, I can see the potential for a profitable small business (which I think Bessed is becoming and will continue to be for our miniscule staff), but I don't see a business that becomes insanely profitable in the manner of a robot-based search engine. There's simply too much labor cost involved in creating 10 million pages or whatever it would take to really have critical mass.

Which I think is why Mahalo is morphing into more of an About.com. That's where they can find the traffic and the ad dollars that make them profitable. I think the question for Mahalo versus a bootstrapped company is whether Mahalo's investors are content with them becoming a somewhat profitable content site versus becoming a game-changer that leads to a big acquisition or IPO. There's no doubt that sites like Mahalo and Bessed have value, but if those behind the scenes at Mahalo aren't content with being big versus huge, then you'll see it sold off in the next few years and those investors will move on.

Very well written post. I was (and still am) skeptical about human powered search.

I just wanted to elaborate on the first con (breaking people's google habit) a little bit. One of the points that I'd like to add is that no matter how many human editors Mahalo employs, the size of the content is always going to be pretty darn small compared to Google's massive index.

This introduces a serious limitation to the mahalo approach. It may be easy to find common place stuff like "2008 presidential debate" or "the dark knight", but search for obscure terms may not yield any results. A lot of folks use Google for ego surfing or searching for other people (online background check etc.). Mahalo will not work in such a use case.

Google has become the substitute for the browser address bar for many people. Its gonna be difficult topping that off.

None the less, Jason is a pretty smart entrepreneur. so, its still too soon to write off mahalo.

I think you have addressed an important and timely issue. Will the human-powered search has its future? Thank you for sharing us with your thoughts, and it is a very well written.

About my own opinion, I support the strike-back of the human-powered search. However, many (or nearly all) of the current takes (represented by Mahalo) have made a mistake in their strategies. They are trying to perform the same search as Google but using human power. This thought is totally wrong.

Please allow me telling a little bit hint. Machine's strength is to tell people where the information is, while human's strength is to tell people who are the master of handling certain information. If the human-powered search is only going to compete the goal that machine-powered search is good at, there is no chance of winning. That's why this version of Mahalo or its likely peers may have little chance of success.

But only if the human-powered search engines may change their thoughts, a new door will open. Google will n

Really interesting post. With so many search engines out there, it is really hard to differentiate and figure out the pros and the cons. Mahalo has come out with an idea that, while it may seem novel, really isn't, but is still brilliant and it works. Wikis, like TradeVibes, depend almost entirely on human interaction for their livelihood, so why not translate that in to a search engine? Thanks for highlighting a great company, and as always, thanks for the TradeVibes mention.

Keep enjoying TradeVibes and encouraging others to use it like the resource we intend to be!

-Lilly

You're right that human powered search companies need to change their thinking. They shouldn't try to compete directly with search engines.

At findingDulcinea our chief focus is on guides to the most commonly searched topics, top-level and specific. We don't claim to be the be-all, end-all in people's search process; in fact, we are trying to hark back to a time when people did more research and more discovering on their own--in a library, for instance.

We open the door to a world of good sites, not a universe of sites ranging in quality and credibility. There's no question of trying to compete with a search engine, but to suggest that starting a Web search with a search engine isn't always the best bet. It's often very inefficient, time-consuming, and confusing. Our insight into what the sites we've chosen are offering better equips Web users, making them more fluent searchers.

Search engines' success needn't crowd out human-powered sites or prevent them from being successful.

Liz

Man does not live on Google alone. Our philosophy at ButtonALL is that there is a time and place for many search engines relative to the situation. Our job is to organize them and create a better user interface.

You can test drive most of the human search engines referenced in this article all from one page just by clicking here: http://www.buttonall.com/add/48

I use a search engine to find information, lots of it. It would be great if I could see which pages are most recommended, which ones are spam, and which ones are redundant. I would love that. To do that though takes a lot of mundane task work, which can easily be automated by flowcharts, algorithms, and rationale. So in the search area they are 100 lines of code away from being frivolous.

I use "human power" to find reviews, ratings, and opinions. Even then though I could care less what one person thinks, I want to know what 100 think. I (and most others) just look for patterns. Do 80 of 90 people highly recommend a product? Great, then I'm more likely to buy that.

Thus when it comes to search engines the only "human" aspect that could aid the process would be a simple 5 star rating process. If Google ever let people rate individual sites, and then added that rating to part of it's search algorithm that would be the end of "human-powered search engines" as we know it.

As I've said before, I hate any business that's a feature away from obsolescence, and that's exactly what Mahalo and others like it are.