Earlier today, I was on my cell  with Patrice Filin. Patrice is the  CEO of the world renown community Soccer worldsocerconnection.net.

Patrice and I were talking Search Engine Optimization, wondering what will be the next big thing. He mentioned to me Mahalo I vaguely remembered seeing reviews on the conmpany few days ago. Mahalo use a Human powered search, or “pre-created results pages”. hum but wait a minute isn't what bessed is already doing? seems like a carbon copy to me!
 
This Human Powered Search seems to be popular now, but it too has been done before. Yahoo’s directory was an attempt by human editors to catalog and classify web sites in the early days. About.com used guides as topical editors to create very rich and useful links to content. Both approaches eliminated spam and SEO tricks.

Mahalo, and others, are doing the same thing today and calling it “human powered search”. Jason Calacanis is a talented entrepreneur, and he has some big backers like Sequoia, Mark Cuban and Elon Musk. If anyone can do it Calacanis can. But, I think history has proven that this approach will have marginal success.
 
The problem is, most people are perfectly happy with Google results for the more common searches. They aren’t looking for an alternative. Where Google and other engines often fall flat and are susceptible to spam is in the “long tail” of searches—searches for specific people, products, facts, etc. These are the searches in which searchers come away dissatisfed and are open to an alternative that can solve their problem and save them time.

I don’t know if any human-powered effort can adequately cover the millions of potential searches that take place each day, but by simply ignoring them Mahalo has no compelling reason to exist. It does not solve a searcher’s problem, so beyond what Calacanis can drum up traffic-wise based on his own personal celebrity, it will fall flat.

Big content publishers can be very successful with the human prepared search approach. In fact, as readers this is what we expect from them. Be the editors that find and catalog the best content on any subject. They will of course highlight their own content, but that is fine with most readers. This is why I said earlier that some of the big content publishers will likely acquire some of these alternative search engines. It makes sense.
 
Vertical search - There are lots of opportunities in vertical search such as jobs, shopping, medical, investments, real estate, cars, etc. People search, classified search, and local search are also big opportunities. These are smaller niche markets but attract very high advertising rates. There are two or three players in each of these market segments that can build a reasonably profitable business.
 
My guess is that most of the alternative search engines focusing on broad web search will fail. A few will achieve some level of success and then be acquired by one of the big five search players or large content publishing networks. Vertical search engines will find some profitable niches.
 
The big untapped opportunities? Local search, mobile search, and voice search. I think all three of these will converge on the cell phone to create a whole new approach to search, and a new set of winners.