For some the search site ChaCha might sound familiar. For the rest, allow me to introduce a social search experiment with dreams of making the web more accessible and returning the most relevant search results possible.
Most social search sites employ tags, directories, ratings systems, and user comments to help you find relevant results. ChaCha employs a virtual harem packed with web-savvy guides capable of locating hard-to-find and obscure pages. That’s right, guides. One of ChaCha’s main features is that there is literally a collective of search experts waiting for your query.
The simplicity is beautiful. Visit their home page, enter your query, and click “Search With Guide” to get started. The following page will have a small chat window on the left that allows you to communicate with your search guide, and the guide’s results (styled like every other engine’s results) on the right.
Not happy with what your guide found? Tell them! Chat with them and provide more information so they can refine your search. You can even ask to be transferred to a new guide.
I’ve found the quality of the results to be inconsistent; it all really depends on who your guide is. It’s still in beta (of course), but it’s a great concept that has a lot of potential.
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I’m a guide on Cha Cha, their overall search engine is really great and if you haven’t tried it before, go an do it now!!