Mahalo.com launched in May 2007 as a human edited search engine where actual humans hand-edited search results for popular search terms. The site then back-filled remaining results with Google powered search results.

As is often the case with start-ups, the product has evolved over the past 19 months. Today, the site offers a mix of features rather than a singular focus. Is that good or bad? That’s for Mahalo.com to decide.

Below is feedback from ten of 3rd Party Feedback’s reviewers based on what the site looked like yesterday.

Mahalo.com – January 17, 2009

Let’s see what they had to say:

What Does This Website Do?

1. It’s a site for questions & answers. Members ask questions other answer. You get points which is great, you start with 50 points. There is also a live blog.
2. A search engine with local (Mahalo) results & Google results. Includes news service and “answers” service.
3. This website seems to be a comprehensive source of news and information and also provides answers to queries. I have also heard that this site functions as a search engine, though this was not readily apparent.
4. This is a website that offers stories and blogs for everything that is news and entertainment.
5. Offers various news stories in a “Yahoo style” kind of way.
6. Mahalo provides news, blogs updates, and answers to questions.
7. Gives up-to-date news, celebrity gossip etc. Has running blog with continuous story feeds. Has ask a question section where you can pay to have questions answered. And has feature stories section
8. Its a current news page with a live blog sections.
9. Its a news website, and post live blogs
10. The website has news information, how to information, answers to questions, and much more.

What’s interesting to me about the above feedback is the inconsistency of the results. People have different ideas what problem Mahalo.com is designed to solve. This isn’t necessarily a problem as long as people visiting the site find something of value. However, it could be a problem if the lack of focus confuses people, thus causing them to lunge for their browser’s back button.

Best Current Feature

1. The answer and questions feature is definitely the best feature.
2. The current news viewer mid-page is really nice. Javascript is the way to go. The headlines are current & accurate. Dependable!
3. The “Mahalo News” feature is well-designed and easy to navigate and browse.
4. I think the best feature on the page is the tabs at the top, for the biggest top stories available. It’s easy to find and I like the format of it.
5. The “Mahalo answers” feature is mildly interesting. Otherwise the offerings are average. Nothing else stands out.
6. The running blog is neat,something new constantly.
7. It has up to date news
8. I liked the news information on the homepage. I also liked the design of the homepage.’
9. I like the colors and the design of the website.
10. I personally like the LiveBlog, it’s neat to have news coming in like that on an immediate basis, I like that a lot. I don’t like having to search for my news and having all the current stuff there in one convenient place is great.

The freshness of news on the homepage is a definite standout. That’s good news is that’s the primary goal of the site. Originally, I believe the goal was to create a powerful search experience that allowed the company to serve up high margin pay per click ads against those search results. If that’s where the real money is, the news content may be a distraction. On the other hand, if the news aggregation feature keeps people coming back to the site, it may be the draw that leads to more searches.

1-Thing to Improve

1. A description of some sort. It’s just a blob-page that once you click around you find out what it is. Not a description I guess as much as an “introduction” or something like that.
2. This website could be improved by making clear its function. It would be more valuable to me if I knew exactly how it is “there to help” and what makes it unique.
3. I would change the way the Live Blog looks. It’s too big and bulky looking.
4. Find a feature or offering that really stands out. Perhaps a way to personalize the information.
5. When clicking on the tabs, there is no back button. This is somewhat annoying.
6. Have you considered a travel section?
7. I found the Ask a Question section to be the most valuable, but it is hidden lower in the page. With so many news sections, it kinds of gets lost.
8. A little too much going on. Was interested in the Mahalo answers, read FAQ’s but it is still confusing. Maybe not have all of the website features going on at once on the homepage?
9. Have an ‘About’ button on the top so people know what the page’s purpose is and who puts it out, there’s so much information on the page that it took a while to figure out what thewebpage does.
10. The pictures need to be bigger. There is too much text and not enough pictures

In aggregate, it sounds like the biggest problem new users of the site have is figuring out what the site is about. Why is Mahalo.com a good choice for news? For answers? For search? CNN and Google are both a click away, so why should someone invest their precious time on Mahalo.com?

Let’s assume for a second that Mahalo’s biggest revenue comes from people running searches on the site. Having done that myself, I can say that the quality of Mahalo’s results are impressive. That being the case, streamlining the homepage to encourage searching could train people how to use the site in the most profitable way.

However, if the site is more of a wiki than a search engine – with 231,000 pages indexed in Google, that appears to be the case – then tactics that help increase the site’s link popularity may do more to improve the site’s revenue than actual on-site searching. Based on Mahalo’s founder Jason Calacanis‘ regular peppering of Twitter with current news link-drops to Mahalo pages, I have a feeling this is where the site is seeing the biggest success today:

I’m surprised Fondue and Taurus haven’t been more involved in plugging Mahalo from their twitter accounts.

Unsolicited Advice: If link building is the current strategic goal, make it easier, and encourage, people to link to Mahalo pages. For example, this page about John McEnroe doesn’t include any options for social bookmarking or reblogging. Even something near the footer that says, “Did you find this page valuable? Consider sharing it with your friends.” may help organically increase the site’s deep inbound links.