Mahalo: Can a Human-Edited Search Engine Work?

[Kevin Newcomb]

Jason Calacanis, former CEO of Weblogs Inc. and GM of Netscape, has launched Mahalo (http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/070531-100604), a human-edited search engine/wiki/directory that plans to hand-craft search results for the top search queries.

We've seen attempts to bring humans into the mix before, and they've never been scalable, or maintainable over the long-term. Is this a futile attempt to retry a failed idea, or a refreshing shift away from the "Google borg"?

We all know that Jason's no fan of SEOs, so he's going to work extra-hard to prevent gaming of the system...but is that possible? The editors, like all people, will have their biases, and they may find their way into the answers they craft. And any system worth gaming will eventually be gamed, you can bet on that.

There are many issues for Mahalo to solve, and it's certainly far to early to judge the potential for success or failure. But there are lots of things here to discuss, so let's see if we can break down its strengths and weaknesses, potential issues that will come up, etc.

[evilgreenmonkey]

If Mahalo launched 10 years ago, I'd still choose stock in Enron over this. Possibly the worst search implementation since, well... ever. Makes Ms. Dewey (http://www.msdewey.com/) look like a serious search facility.

Just my opinion of course.

[Marketing Guy]

It's kind of like launching a new burger joint after you spent the past year annoying animal rights activists. It'll either pass by unnoticed as it is so insignificant or hordes of SEOs will break it. :)

The whole point of a search engine is to actually have data to search - I did a few broad searches on it and it basically returned complete rubbish (ie, links for cars, dining tables on a search for career related terms), with a disclaimer saying "this page isn't ready yet" followed by a scape of Google results.

The mindset worked for Wikipedia and might get some kind of following on Mahalo but it will never be mainstream.

Who really wants to search for information using a tool where the level of editorial input to the results is someone saying "this site is ugly"?

IMO the sheer level of keyword links to "top sites" they have on top phrases is nothing more than a concerted effort to manipulate SERPs on a huge scale, which is highly hypocritical given the anti-SEO attitude of Calacanis. The "Paris Hotels" section is just a list of links to a variety of deep content on other sites using keyphrases (paris hotels, cheap paris hotels, etc).

Had the project been a collaborative effort between some reputable organisations (Universities for example), then fair play. But it's no more than 1 man's beef with an industry.

My prediction:

1. It will gain some momentum and the SEM community will jump on board.
2. The editorial process will become tainted either with editors flaunting their own self interest, or the system being bogged down with submissions for review (same as DMOZ).

It is nothing more than a narrow minded perception of how the Internet should be - in fact I'd go as far as saying it is simply a large scale link farm that's had a makeover. The fact that the folks behind it have no commerical interest in the search results they are manipulating doesn't make their intentions anymore honourable.

Sad. Pathetic. Good luck Jonah.

MG

[David Wallace]

Even though a search algorithm such as Google's is not perfect, I think I'd much rather trust it than biased human opinion. As for gaming it for SEO? Most of us already don't worry about any engine besides the top 4 (Google, Yahoo!, MSN and Ask) so I don't see SEOs rushing to try to get their results into this one when the amount of traffic it might possibly send (if any) will be so minute.

[kennethwlong]

None of the commonly searched for pages that I requested had even been created yet. Perhaps he should start with yellow page headings and go from there. Why would anyone use this?

[sumit123]

Hi Mahalo,

Yes,it is possible to make human edited search engine,but it will require lot of hardwork and you may get confused.

I would advise you to launch a human edited directory such as yahoo or dmoz,it will be more beneficial to you.