A human search engine? What could that possibly mean? Aren’t search engines driven by some remote computer software algorithms that the average human couldn’t possibly ever understand? All of these are excellent questions…..let’s talk about some answers.

Humans at Mahalo.com review the websites that are submitted and then include them for indexing in search engine listings. When you do a search using Mahalo.com, you will get results that include the top seven sites that have been submitted to Mahalo.com, along with some other pertinent information and relevant web pages from Google searches. All pages that appear on your list of results have been approved by human editors prior to their inclusion in the indexing system.

One of the benefits of using a human-powered search engine system is that your exposure to spam and phishing sites is significantly reduced. Webmasters that submit their sites to Mahalo.com for approval have an investment in getting that approval and generally understand that garbage just won’t get through. Mahalo.com’s plan is that your search results will be more relevant and of a much higher quality than those you would find in a regular search engine. Search engines like Google and Yahoo rely heavily on search engine optimization to get results, and this strategy can be highly manipulated, ultimately skewing the quality and relevance of the results of your search.

Humans working at Mahalo.com are making decisions about what information is most commonly searched for. Now, keep in mind that these humans are not just randomly picking topics and results, but instead they are taking the computer statistics, search engine information, and Internet patterns and re-interpreting and indexing them to be used by other humans in a functional, practical way. This lessens the efforts of those searching the Internet by streamlining the results for them and leading them more directly to the information they want.

This concept is not entirely new to the Internet, you may recall that Ask.com tried a similar approach a decade ago but lost the fight as Google gained power. Mahalo.com hopes to draw interest because people are now tired of the over-SEO’d, software-generated results that they have to wade through to get the relevant information they need. By the end of 2007, Mahalo.com reported that they had some 25,000 search topics indexed, far exceeding their initial goals and cementing a place for them among up-and-coming search engines.

“Mahalo” means “thank you” in Hawaiian. Users of Mahalo.com are finding themselves more and more grateful for the design and implementation of this latest, very useful system of searching for information. This is a timesaver, and a frustration-saver, too. Mahalo.com is intended for you to be able to spend more time enjoying the content that you find, not searching for it! Computers have forever changed our lives, and the Internet has opened up the world for exploration of absolutely anything and everything, with endless information right at your fingertips. But, putting the human touch back into that process, at least just a little bit, can make a huge difference.

Author's Bio: 

Jack Humphrey is one of the web's leading social marketing experts. He teaches his social media marketing tactics at Social Power Linking and blogs about social marketing and blog marketing at the Friday Traffic Report.

jackhumphrey.com