Mahalo: The Sound Of Gracious Assistance

I always get a smile on my face when people talk about Mahalo.com, the hand indexed search engine alternative founded by Jason Calacanis. You see, the word in Hawaiian means thank you, and it put me to mind of relaxing vacations on the Islands and the Hawaiian shirt clad employees of ABC stores that say it so frequently while you are there.

The first time I looked at Mahalo, I liked it but did not find it compelling enough to change my search spot of choice. As time has gone on, however, I keep coming back to the site when I am looking for a launchpad for searches on a particular B2C topic, because the Mahalo editors are very good at identifying both great links and key places to explore. It’s that second bit that I like the most – the opportunity to root around in related topics while still getting all the basic info on my search term in a single page.

I still don’t do a majority of my searches on Mahalo, in part because I generally look for rather esoteric stuff, and the Mahalo model is really more focused on a set of 10-25,000 frequently searched terms. Also, I am used to asking for things in certain ways on my regular search tool (Yahoo). All that said, I do use Mahalo increasingly because it is so darned well organized and entertaining as a means of learning more about a topic!

Take, for example, a Mahalo search on Thanksgiving. Type it into Google or even my beloved Yahoo and you get 19 bajillion links to (let's face it) mostly irrelevant content. Type it into Mahalo and you find a definition, fast facts, a collection of recent news articles on the topic, history, recipes, traditions lists, a collection of related Mahalo pages, and a host of other interesting and entangling links.

Then I got to thinking about who their real close in competitors are, and I didn’t come up with Yahoo or Google but rather About.com. Though About offers greater breadth in terms of searchable topics, and Mahalo offers far greater depth and better organization.

Anyhow. If you haven’t looked at Mahalo, or at least not lately, I suggest you give it the once over today. No ad opps yet, but I ‘spect they’re a coming!

Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to write.