Subscribers

Just read my ClickZ Search newsletter today where Tessa Wegert discussed the new search engine on the block – ChaCha Search.

ChaCha Search (Cha means search in Chinese she explains) takes a bit of a different approach to search in that there is a human element involved. While you can search yourself just like on normal search engines, with a click of a button you can enter your query and have a human guide do the search for you.

You carry on a chat within an IM window where the guide asks you specific questions about your search query and then performs searches for you, relaying results as they find them.

I found it an interesting experience, I tried doing the same type of search myself in their engine as well as in Google, and truth be told, albeit a little slow to show up, the results were quite good and many of them were not ones I had found before on my own (maybe I’m just a lousy searcher who knows).

Here’s what I liked and didn’t like about this engine:

Likes:
- Able to validate how accurate my searches were and if there was a way to get more information that I didn’t know how to access
- The guide asked questions to ensure they understand the intent behind my query so they could try to make sure the results were relevant
- The guide asked me if the results were helpful and whether or not I wanted her to keep searching after display about 5 very targeted results
- I could rate the guide to tell the company whether or not I liked her results
- It was free for someone else to do the work for me

Dislikes:
- No way to send the link to a coworker to show them the results (or even email them), trying to copy and paste the link starts your session again and connects you to a new guide
- You’re asked to rate the guide right away before you’ve been able to review all the results
- Didn’t notice a way to be able to contact one specific guide if you’re a regular user and like one particular guide (granted I didn’t check this too thoroughly)
- A little slow, yes it was a human searching and they found relevant results, but when I search Google pops up results in less than 1 second usually
- For Canadians – the ads that I saw (both display and PPC were VERY U.S. based. I didn’t come across one Canadian ad, in fact everything assumed I was American and targeted ads at me in that way

A little trip to Alexa shows that while traffic is increasing to this site, our friends at Google.ca have what appears to be at least double the amount of traffic. Granted, according to Tessa, the site has only been around since September so it needs time for the word to spread I guess.

From a paid ad perspective, the ads you see are actually not based on keyword, but on subject category as defined by your guide. A very different approach to the way the big engines do it now.

Will this work? Is there room for another engine? Is this a scalable model if it takes off? How will they be able to pay for enough human guides to be accessible if the reach increases tremendously? Will perforamce-based ads alone be enough to pay these folks? How/Will this benefit Canadian marketers? Will there be a Canadian version? How robust is or will be the targeting of ads for Canadian advertisers?

I don’t know the answers to any of the above questions, but I am definitely intrigued by this concept and will be paying close attention to see what happens in the near future.