Human-built search engine Mahalo appears to be shooting past the traffic numbers it got when it launched, according to Heather Hopkins at traffic analyst firm Hitwise.
Mahalo pages are collections of the most useful links regarding a wide variety of timely topics in popular niches. I find the idea of curating a collection of content over time fascinating. On each page at Mahalo you can suggest links, grab the OPML file for all the feeds on a page and even get a Firefox plug-in to take Mahalo everywhere you go. I know it's not hip to like Mahalo in tech circles, but I do.
Despite the love-hate relationship many in the tech industry have with the company's founder, Jason Calacanis, the site is proving just-plain-useful. It's not the hit-or-miss Mahalo Daily Show that keeps me coming back - though days 3 and 4 of CES coverage were quite good, as was The Room episode and the one about cookies was ok. (Aak!) It's the way that Mahalo acts as a reference site, just like Wikipedia is a reference, that I visit and recommend checking out the site for.
Critics say that Mahalo will never scale like an automated index can, to which the company argues that it's only serving the bulk of popular search queries, not the long tail of search. Link selection is also very arbitrary - but I find Mahalo a good place to start learning about many topics. Other things I look up in Wikipedia first, it just depends on the topic.
The graph above shows the percentage of US internet traffic Hitwise saw going through Mahalo. It's graphed against stillborn competitor Cha Cha. Likewise, Mahalo could go the way of Squidoo, another human curated reference site that seems to have devolved into spam and irrelevance.
The page about the DataPortability Workgroup, for example, is on the Mahalo front page under Technology right now. Aren't you curious what the most pertinent links about that much-discussed group might be? I looked it up out of interest more than to learn about the group, but I've used the site to learn the basics about many non-tech topics in the news. I didn't know there was a conflict between Iranian and US Navy ships this week, but I found all kinds of articles and videos about the topic on the Mahalo page.
While tech and news are my topics of choice, Hitwise reports that most outbound traffic from Mahalo is destined for Entertainment (37%) and News and Media (19%) sites. I wouldn't be surprised if Mahalo's success continues.
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all Read/WriteWeb posts
Marshall,
Nice write up, please let me know if you have feedback on the tech pages. You can toss:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/MahaloTech
into your feedreader to see the latest pages created for this category.
Sean
Posted by: sean percival | January 10, 2008 5:36 PMSean, thanks - subscribed. I'll watch that feed as close as I can for learnin' about the tech items I miss and for longer-term evaluation of the quality of Mahalo. Except I guess since that feed shows when pages are first created, it might not be the judge of that. I think you're right though to push the RSS feed as the ticket to ongoing engagement in the community there :)
Posted by: Marshall KirkpatrickMahalo is an interesting project but I just can't see it attracting enough users to become viable enough to justify the investment it's attracted. If people-powered search is going to have an impact, I think it will resonate more in vertical niches where users want and demand great, relevant and interesting results.
Mark
Posted by: Mark Evans | January 10, 2008 6:42 PMMahalo is, IMO, wiki-search. If they build a community of strong followers it could work. Or, just keep the Hawaii natives Googling mahalo and they should see steady growth.
Posted by: CP | January 10, 2008 7:44 PMWhile I don't doubt that Mahalo is growing, I still can't quite figure out how to use it. It's not really much of a search engine...whenever I type something that I'm looking for into Mahalo, it is never there. Granted, I don't often search for news about Britney Spears or the Data Portability Work Group. But when I type real searches, the things I would normally look up on google, Mahalo invariably shows me the "we don't have this page yet" message.
It does seem interesting as a collection of links...it kind of reminds of me the Yahoo Blog that recently closed down. Kind of a "here are some cool links about this topic". I think the problem Mahalo suffers from is that there was so much hype surrounding it's launch and the big tech names connected to it that it almost couldn't help but under deliver. A collection of links/news/video about a topic is definitely useful, but I think that people (myself included) were expecting something more. I still have a mahalo account (and I must say I was tickled when Jason Calcanis or someone using his account added me as a friend) and despite myself I find that I keep giving it a shot from time to time. I'll be interested to see how it develops.
Posted by: Joel | January 10, 2008 7:49 PMGood SEO is the reason for the growth & mahalo is more like an about.com than a google or ask.com. I think the only reason they insist they are a search engine because from a valuation standpoint the multiple for a seo based content is not as attractive as a search business :)
Posted by: Gopi | January 10, 2008 9:27 PMI hadn't realized people were dissing Mahalo in the tech community. Guess I haven't been reading those posts!
Mahalo's going to be very big. Calacanis said he got something like 3 years of funding and it's eventually going to be a monster.
It's true that Mahalo isn't really a search engine but calling it "seo based content" as did Gopi misses the point.
What they're building is a web directory but those aren't popular so they've forefronted their site search and called it a search engine.
I think that's very smart as I discussed at my rarely updated Flux Research blog:
http://www.fluxresearch.com/2007/10/from-the-dewey-.html
I say this even though I found Weblogs Inc. to be a disappointment with a lot of blogs that weren't active and, of course, the Netscape debacle will never be forgotten.
Posted by: Clyde Smith | January 10, 2008 9:54 PMI agree with Gobi above 100%.
Posted by: Otis Gospodnetic | January 10, 2008 10:39 PMAs a matter of fact, here is the full analysis:
http://blog.simpy.com/blojsom/blog/?permalink=Mahalos-Source-of-Traffic-Analysis.html
I find this quite incredible really. I have tried Mahalo and didn't like it.
Posted by: Spuds | January 11, 2008 12:41 AMI would be interested to know a marketing spending that supports that growth..
Posted by: Yakov | January 11, 2008 3:14 AMMahalo pays to have people do "search results pages" for about $5 a piece.
What you see is the traffic from these people visiting constantly the site as they get an additional $2 dollars just to maintain the results and this paid traffic is draining the coffers till the bottom is visible in about a year.
The whole mahalo 'experience' is terrible from a users point of view.
Posted by: Dr. C. Mahalaal Purnat (Calcutta) | January 11, 2008 4:28 AMYes Mahalo is growing. Funny thing, Rex Dixon is on board and growth surges! :)
Seriously, it's a very nice service and even though it was bashed in the beginning, the Mahalo team is working hard and you can see it as the product is improving.
Rex
Posted by: Rex Dixon | January 11, 2008 4:55 AMMarshall - who spiked your kool-aid?
Posted by: allen stern | January 11, 2008 7:04 AMHey Otis - here are the charts you asked for:
Posted by: allen stern | January 11, 2008 7:23 AMhttp://www.centernetworks.com/mahalo-changes-pricing-and-seo-play