July 10th, 2007
Life without Google: ChaCha bets on people power
Can human aided searches be a differentiator? A lot of search firms–including ChaCha–sure hope so.
Just to be upfront–I’m skeptical about people powered search. Despite that perspective, I decided to give ChaCha a whirl as part of my Life without Google series (see gallery right).
I discovered ChaCha courtesy of Webware, a sister blog that recently named its 100 best Web companies by category. ChaCha was in the data category along with other search giants like Google and Yahoo.
On the surface ChaCha is nothing more than a metasearch engine compiling results from the big players–the usual suspects like Google and windows Live Search.
So what’s going to make ChaCha different? People. If you’re looking for something specific you can click for a live chat with a ChaCha guide. I tried it a few times and found it moderately helpful. Keep in mind these were just tests. I’ll have to try ChaCha when I’m trying to source a story or find some IT middle manager’s resume in 5 minutes for the site to really win me over.
Overall, here’s how ChaCha stands relative to other search sites I’ve tried.
Guide experience. ChaCha is the first people powered search I’ve tried. Overall, the experience went well and the guides were helpful. I’d give it an A.
User experience. I found the interface lacking compared to other search engines. Ask.com has the UI down and other search alternatives like Quintura were better. I’d rate it a C.
Search results. Since ChaCha combs other search engines, the results were standard issue. I did find sponsored links mixed in here and there, which I thought was annoying. One news result got top billing with a note that it was sponsored by Fox News. Audio results were interesting and I was able to find video without any issues. I’d rate it a C–nothing terrible, but nothing outstanding either.
Searchbar ease of use. As you know I’m big on adding search engines to my browser search box. ChaCha may have been the easiest on this front. When I visited the home page it was sitting there in my browser to be added with just a click. Let’s call that an A.
Overall, ChaCha is solid even though I didn’t get the impression that the site was pushing the envelope. If you value help from real people it may be handy. If not–ChaCha is nothing more than a short detour.
Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and Editorial Director of ZDNet sister site TechRepublic. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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