There’s another new search player in the arena, and their name is ChaCha.
As the first search engine to connect people in real-time to produce relevant results, ChaCha provides users with a comfortable and familiar search experience that improves upon the shortcomings of first-generation search engines. ChaCha’s live human guides correspond with users via a real-time chat interface in order to provide only the most relevant search results.
HOW CHACHA WORKS: Powered by thousands of knowledgeable humans, when search queries are entered into ChaCha, the system automatically locates the best available guide to deliver personal and targeted results for users’ searches. Additionally, ChaCha users can choose to either “search with a guide” or get instant search results by tapping into ChaCha’s rapidly expanding index of human-generated results.
I’m not sure if I’d consider them the first if they’re still in Alpha, but maybe they are. Google Answers and Yahoo Answers may not be able to be considered purely a search engine.
To test the search, I searched for the phrase “the best cichlids to put in a tank” (I’m an aquarium hobbyist) and used the “Search With Guide” option. The interface quickly opened up and I was quickly connected to my Guide HeatherH. She let me know she would be helping me with my search and asked me what I needed help with, I then pointed her back to my search. Heather searched for a little bit and then gave me some results, which…. took her too long to come up with something.
Note: I was able to add ChaCha as a search provider very easily to my IE7 search bar, so that’s a plus. I’ll continue to try them out in the future.
A nice idea, and the speed was pretty quick. I believe once they really build up a team of Guides that truly can be considered knowledgeable and specialists in the areas I’m searching, this could be a great development in online search, particularly for the average internet user that needs that sort of help.