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Mahalo, Ho-Hum 
By: David Berkowitz 2007-05-31 Another day, another search engine getting some buzz. This one, Mahalo, has some pedigree behind it - well, if you can call it that.
Jason Calacanis, the entrepreneur behind WeblogsInc, is the CEO. Calacanis is notoriously against any kind of search engine optimization, so it's fitting that this doesn't apply in Mahalo's ranking. What do you get when you take the SEO out of the SE? In my book, a pretty poor excuse for an engine. Here are a few problems I have with Mahalo: 1) It takes too long to scan the results. They're categorized, but there aren't descriptions - it's hard to differentiate one link from another. 2) It's all human powered, which means it's arbitrary. I'm also skeptical that any kind of Wiki-style search engine will ever gain traction. For a search on John McCain, for instance, Amazon and IMDB are the third and fourth links - is this really what people want? And why do CBS News (with a news article) and Fox News (with a video link) get priority over other sites? 3) Lon Harris wrote the McCain page. Lelah wrote the cake page. Jonathan wrote the page on apple, the fruit (disambiguated from Apple, the computer company and Apple, the record label). Who are you people? It's funny, I wouldn't really trust my friends to choose the most relevant search results for me. I have very few friends (Cara excluded) with whom I share the vast majority of interests and preferences. I don't even trust all the links the email and IM me. So why the heck would I trust Lon, Lelah, and Jonathan? It's funny, when we get into the trust issue. I trust my camera to work, but I wouldn't trust a friend to take pictures for me. I trust my TV to work, but I wouldn't trust a friend to program my digital video recorder (DVR). I trust my search engine to work, but I wouldn't trust anyone with ranking my search results. Yet I do trust Sony for my camera, JVC for my TV, and Google for my search engine. (I wonder if friends of Larry Page and Sergey Brin have that issue.) What do you think - would you trust someone else to rank your search results? And do you trust Mahalo? Comments Tag: Mahalo Have a bookmark! -  About the Author: David Berkowitz is Director of Strategic Planning for 360i and oversees the Search Informed Marketing firm's Emerging Media Practice. Every Tuesday, he pens the Search Insider column for MediaPost, with over 100 articles published to date. He often speaks at events covering marketing, media, and technology; his previous engagements include Ad:Tech, Consumer Electronics Show - Digital Hollywood, MediaPost's Search Insider Summit, and many others. He has also blogged extensively with MarketersStudio.com, MarketingVox, nowEurope, AdTechBlog, and others. |
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