Mahalo is a new search directory that launched less than a week ago. It is human-powered. Read on to find out how searching Mahalo is different and how to get your site listed if you are a web master, web site owner or blogger.

Searching or browsing Mahalo

When you do a search on Mahalo, you don’t search an index of millions or billions of web pages like you do at Yahoo!, Google, Windows Live and their competitors.

You search (or even browse) a relatively tiny index of searches that have been prepared for you by Mahalo employed web searchers. The search results have then been filtered by these employees, called guides, and when you do your search, only the really good stuff will appear. So even though Mahalo calls itself a search engine, it is really a directory or a web catalog.

When you come to the Mahalo home page , you are presented with a regular search box and 10 main categories.

If you click More below the category list, you come to a list showing all of Mahalo’s categories alphabetically. If you know exactly what you are looking for, e.g. Bollywood movies, click on B and find listings for Bollywood, Bollywood Actors, Bollywood Actresses, and Bollywood Filmmakers and Producers.

If you are not looking for Bollywood related information specifically, but for Indian popular culture in general, do a search for India and you get links for Indian sports, literature, music and more.

Transparency

Some of the links on Mahalo has symbols next to them. Links that are among the favorites of a guide are followed by the shaka sign, a hand showing only the thumb and fourth finger. This is a Hawaiian greeting. If you point your mouse to any shaka sign, it will show you the initials of the guide who recommended it and why he or she likes it.

If a site that is listed has pop-ups, invasive ads or other potential problems, the link is marked by a yellow warning sign. Pointing your mouse to the sign will tell you what the problem is.

At the bottom of each result page you find the name of the guide who built it. If you click on the guide’s name, you come a profile page containing a short bio and a list of other result pages by the same guide.

All of this makes for great transparency, which is something you can’t say about e.g. Google.

The easy navigation and the human touch should also make Mahalo popular among parents, teachers and others who guide children online.

How to get your site listed

Regular search engine optimization techniques won’t get you listed in Mahalo. First of all, the guides will only consider your site if they find it to be a valuable resource. If you have a scraper blog or a web site about your pet hamster, chances are it will not be considered.

If you feel your site is valuable (and not just for you and your hamster), you should go ahead and recommend it.

You find a Recommend a link box in the right hand column of all Mahalo pages. If you find a search result page that you think could really use your site, you enter your URL in the box, include a description of why the site is useful for the search result, and click on Submit.

This will bring your site to the guide’s attention. She or he is free to include it or leave it out. If you are curious about the criteria for selecting sites for a particular search term, each search result page at Mahalo has its own message board. You are free to click on the link to the message board in the right hand column and join in the discussion.

If you have a site that ranks well in Google, you still have a chance to be visible in Mahalo even if the guide has chosen not to include it. If Mahalo don’t have any results for your query, they will show the top results from Google in stead.

Here are the rules the guides work by:

They will not link to:

1. spam sites.
2. non-spam sites that have deceptive, or overbearing, advertising. For example, we will not link to blogs that have nothing but ads above the fold, forcing you to scroll down to get to the content. This includes sites that are largely advertorial.
3. any sites that give the appearance of participating in phishing or any other type of malicious activity (”phishing” being the fraudulent acquisition of sensitive personal information by masquerading as a trustworthy entity).
4. sites that simply regurgitate information from other sites with or without giving credit where credit is due. For example, if you have a blog that you use to simply aggregate your favorite posts about gadgets from other, more notable gadget blogs (such as Engadget or Gizmodo)—without adding substantial value and information via your blog—then we will always link directly to the source of the information rather than to your blog.
5. sites which scrape or re-purpose other people’s content without permission. Note: We are not able to police every site we link to, so we will make mistakes. If we’re linking to a site which you feel is misappropriating your content please let us know by clicking the “Report” link on the search result page in question.
6. sites of unknown origin (i.e. we cannot establish who operates the site).
7. sites which have adult content or hate speech.

They will link to:

1. sites that are considered authorities in their field (i.e. Edmunds for autos, Engadget for consumer electronics, and the New York Times for news).
2. sites which create original, high-quality content on a consistent basis.
3. sites that have been operating for over one year. Sites under a year will be considered, but most will be placed in a “member-submitted” section at the bottom of the page until they hit the one-year mark.
4. sites that have clean layout, design, and a modest amount of advertising.

Read on: On Mahalo and the role of human-powered directories in Internet searching