ChaCha is a meta search engine that offers a unique twist–it has guides that can help you find information via live chat. It’s a worthy stopover in the Life without Google experiment.
To test out the people aspect of the search, which is really the main selling point, I picked a topic that wasn’t way difficult but not easy either. My mission: Find blog posts related to Andrew Morton, a Linux programmer at Google. Here’s my search.
These human results aren’t instant, which can be a problem is you’re impatient.
The chat session tells me to keep my patience as Ryan a guide looks for the goods. He also asks questions to refine the search.
Ryan turns up a result that wasn’t perfect, but was something I wouldn’t have found on my own. You can also rate the guide.
A look at the video results on a search for Andrew Morton. Four results were relevant from what I can tell. Others less so. I found the video wall on the right way annoying.
The news results were functional, but I found the presentation a bit lacking. It would be helpful if things were grouped together better. Here’s a search on AMD’s benchmarking issues
The audio search was also an interesting twist. You can also play the audio right from your browser. One gripe: Dates weren’t given so the only way to know the podcast date is to click. You may get an old podcast as I did.
Larry formerly served as the East Coast news editor and Finance Editor at CNET News.com. Prior to that, he was editor of Ziff Davis Inter@ctive Investor, which was, according to Barron's, a Top-10 financial site in the late 1990s. Larry has covered the technology and financial services industry since 1995, publishing articles in WallStreetWeek.com, Inter@ctive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning magazine.
