When I first saw Mahalo.. I thought jeez is this really all he is introducing?? basically Cha Cha meets Wikipedia .. so I wasn't overwhelmed w/ the angle of going after the Fat part of the Tail.. it seems to me that the way to truly utilize a combination of People / Machine search is to target micro- niche's ... this became more evident when I searched for "Honda Civic" after listening to Jason's Podcast w/ SEO critics today on Mahalo being that I am a long time Honda enthusiast and directly involved in the Aftermarket industry. My impressions of the search results were that it was a totally "mailed in" .... I wonder how many more are?? Now let me preface I think that they Mahalo is on the right track w/ it's Greenhouse Program..
"Honda Civic Message Boards and Blogs
- Autoblog: Honda Civic Search
- HondaCivicForum.com
- Engadget.com: Honda Civic Search
- Technorati: Honda Civic Tags
hmmm autoblog - no biased there (cough cough) if you search "Honda Civic" you get 8 not so great posts.. more like press releases ...
HondaCivicForum.com - is an ok board.. but did the guide just simply search for "Honda Civic Forum" on google and walla you guessed it HondaCivicForum.com .... Honda-Tech.com would have been a much better choice in my opinion.. you be the judge 240,000 members vs 22,000 ..
Engadget.com ????????????????? What relevance does that have.. oh wait (Weblogs Inc) .. I see pattern here
Technorati Link... great idea but did the guide look at these results????
I could go on and on about the results on that page.. but the results speak for themselves...people want valuable info not the same old same old...
Jason this is you reputation on the line and with results like this.. I'm not sure you will gain loyal users.. but you are a sly one.. and I think that you are actually banking on that "Google Juice" when someone actually types "Honda Civic" into Google and the Honda Civic Mahalo page scores high on SERP i.e exactly how Wikipedia does...
But I thought the point was to provide the best possible results :(
p.s. I would have left feedback but I was only limited too 500 characters
2 comments:
Hello. Mahalo for checking out our site! I'm Lon, the Guide who made that Honda Civic page, and I'm very sorry it did not include the information for which you were looking.
I assure you that I put some genuine effort into arranging all of those resources and seeking out the best links. But obviously, this being the Internet, one person is going to miss some great sites out there. That's why we're always encouraging our users to help us out and submit links, which you can do on the sidebar of every Mahalo page.
Thanks again for checking out the site! Your input is very much appreciated.
Hi Lon,
Thanks for the response Lon.. I have no doubt that Mahalo has great intentions..It just seems that as you scale it will be harder and harder to deliver really top notch search results..
You mentioned that users can submit links..but why would they if they see no real value in the links that are already there.. especially in this case w/ Honda where I could add at least 20 + relevant links almost redoing the results page..
Hope this helps moving forward..
Thanks,
Tom
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