Possible search engine of the future

[Larwee]

I have a big interest in search engines and I've posted a lot about them in different communities. When I post about a new search engine it is often because there is something about it that is fascinating or just different. Other times it might be one that looks as if it has a chance of being of interest to some people.

I'm going to do something a little unusual because I'm writing about a search engine which I'm really not impressed with. That could be because they are very new and everything isn't yet working the way it will later. I'm writing about it because it could really catch the interest of large amounts of people if it works as planned. I'm also writing about it because of the person who is behind it, which adds to the possibility that it might have a chance at some type of success.

The person behind this new search engine is Scott Jones. He helped create voice mail technology. Scott Jones also created Gracenote, which is one of the software systems used in iTunes.

This new search engine is free and has paid "guides" who will give live one-on-one help to users who need extra help finding what they want. It is being tested now and the plan is for it to go into full beta later this year.

The idea is to connect users to a guide who has experience, knowledge or background in a particular field. The added use of human intelligence is suppose to give much better results.

The guides are organized by their areas of knowledge. Users connect to the guide by instant message from the home page of the site. Users can ask the guide questions until they get their desired information.

The plan is to have about 3000 guides and add more as needed. The guides will be paid $5 to $10 an hour. The guides who do a better job of bringing user satisfaction can earn up to $20 an hour.

Guides will also be doing searches on popular terms and organizing them so that when users don't want a live guide they can search and receive search results that have been organized by the guides.

This free service will earn revenue through advertising, including videos shown while users wait for a guide and during searches. The waiting time for a guide is suppose to be less than a minute.

Everything is just getting started and is expected to improve over time. Right now I'm not all that impressed. Many areas don't have any guides and searches done without a guide often produce very poor results and in some cases no results at all.

My main reason to mention this now is to make people aware of this new search service and to have it as one to watch and see how much progress they make over a period of time.

The name of this new search is ChaCha. Here is a link to them http://www.chacha.com

You will also see something there called the ChaCha Underground. This will let you see some searches currently being handled by their guides. It will also show you the catagories that have a large staff of guides and therefore have a chance of being able to better show how the service can work.

[praveen]

suddenly there seems to be a spurt in the number of search engines.

probably the business is bringing the rewards??

hmm... well, i am happy with G M Y

[Larwee]

Almost 14 months have passed since I started this thread. ChaCha is still in beta. Like a lot of search engines with hopes of becoming the next Google, it hasn't made it there yet. At the moment it isn't even close. But who knows what the future might hold.

The ChaCha Underground that I mentioned is now found under Results.

The guides are for people who are lazy as well as those who might not be all that good at conducting searches and those having trouble finding something that is difficult to find. The guides seem to be doing a better job than they were 14 months ago but some still aren't as good as one would want them to be. For many people using the guides is much slower than it would be for them to do their own searches. One problem for the guides is a lot of people just want to play jokes on them with prank searches.

ChaCha also has search available without the use of guides. However there isn't a very large percentage of people who are using ChaCha.

Indiana University has replaced Google with ChaCha. Indiana University librarians and students will now use ChaCha at the Indiana University website. Also students and librarians are encouraged to be unpaid guides. Many people at Indiana University (IU) aren't pleased with the ChaCha selection because they don't feel it was made for the right reasons.

The move to ChaCha was done by new Indiana University president Michael McRobbie, who is a friend of ChaCha founder Scott Jones and Michael McRobbie had been on the ChaCha Board of Directors until shortly before this ChaCha decision was made at Indiana University.

There are sponsored links with the ChaCha results and it is obvious they are trying to make themselves look like Google.

ChaCha says they have some plans for the future. Time will tell what the future holds for ChaCha.

ChaCha: search + brainpower | Simple Access, Better Answers

[iceforever.diamonds]

wouldn't that be complicated for its new users?
i wish it could more friendly than his ideas...

[Larwee]

iceforever.diamonds, no it isn't complicated. A person can use it the same way they would use any search engine if they want to. The only thing that is different is if you want to have a guide help you. But that isn't complicated either. The guide will type questions that you will see and you just type answers to those questions so that the guide can try to help you.