Forum Moderators: bakedjake
new search engine model that employs thousands of paid "guides," who will provide live one-on-one help to users who need extra assistance tracking down online information. The free service, called ChaCha.com, goes live today as a test and is expected to go into full beta later this year.
The Search with guide went ok - I never seen any results I search for "cheap holidat to Tenerife" as an example.
The guide asked if that was in the canary islands. doh! Asked for a price range and then he said he would get another guide to better help with my search.
The next person posted a URL that was dead.
Done a search on Yahoo Travel for me, and before I could say anything they cut me off.
First impression - bad.
huh... displaying the results is taking ages in firefox when i tried to do searched. Not even 1 search gave me any kind of results, leave online me checking for relevancy. probably their servers are hit hard.
Cheers
Further i feel that this doesnt ends up to one more pay for inclusion type facility as there is full human intervetion in the results.
The website is still in apha stage and not showing up results i tried up couple of keywords may be they are still working on that expert field
anyways its good step and hopes it makes web better place to live in
However, I reckon this is the way of the future for search and as the article says, is probably the only way that a startup will be able to challenge Google.
They will be typically paid from $5 to $10 an hour and the company will recruit among college students, retirees and stay-at-home parents.
And hundreds more in Webmasters buying their "unbiased opinions"
There's no way this will work...
isn't this the same model as About.com?
Not really, because it's "one on one." It seems to be more like Google Answers applied to search--or like getting help from a reference librarian at the public library.
If the "guides" really know what they're doing, it might be a useful fee- or subscription-based service for businesses.
It was mentioned also but I wonder about the "bias" of the helper. If I were searching for a pizza place is he going to send me to the one his sister works at? Could be a problem unless his sister makes really good pizza.
Also I wonder about their indexed content and how much caching they do and how much human involvement there is with it.
I recently had a conversation about the legallity of Google cahce and it was suggested that one of the ways they are allowed to index all that content has a lot to do with the limited human involvement. I wonder if this will pose any legal problems?
It was mentioned also but I wonder about the "bias" of the helper. If I were searching for a pizza place is he going to send me to the one his sister works at
I'd be more worried about the advertising model and how that would affect bias.
Added: In other words, is ChaCha going to introduce PPR (Pay Per Recommendation) as a model for search?
It did suggest I give them my email to be notified when a guide is available or to become a ChaCha guide. So for the person who wondered how to sign up there is your invite.
I think this is a case of the news getting out too early. They needed to be at least in beta before they got all this publicity.
If they can avoid the pay per recommendation model I think they will do better. People still expect the internet to be free. It's just a matter of if they can get enough advertizing to pay for it.
[edited by: annej at 5:36 pm (utc) on Sep. 5, 2006]
No. spam control only. The story out there about them trying to hire for something like that, was bogus.
This is just day one of the story I think is going to be very big about March of next year.
It also stands to win the relevance race.
"The results are significantly better because we're incorporating human intelligence into the mix."
Even the lowest level se could seem pretty smart with humans behind it.
Even the lowest level se could seem pretty smart with humans behind it.
And just imagine how smart a high level SE could seem with humans behind it. If ChaCha proves the model, it will surely be implemented by the major players. And in the polished form that ChaCha will absorb the cost of development.
Don
Human Powered Search Engine ChaCha - Can it Out Google Google?
IMO - no! :)
They could highlight 'trustworthy' sources that would be crawled on a regular basis for new content and leave others to be listed as and when based on the accuracy of reults.
IMHO that would put them close to being better than the current G mess.... certainly better than Y and M$ too....
Excatly right: why don't they just foward all this "human" effort to clean out the spam out of regular search and it'll be 10 better!
I think MSN got it right. Google is up to on this idea too - remember their very recent patent on "human/machine" results...
For those of us with great sites, is there a way we can let these "guides" know that we exist?
Donny
