Cha-Cha launches in beta with real live search guides

Filed under: Business, Internet, Web services

Cha-Cha launches in beta with real live search guides

by Chris Gilmer Nov 11th 2006

"The worlds largest live search engine" went live yesterday. Cha-Cha gives you a different kind of searching experience through human intelligence. They actually have a guide who can assist you in real-time via IM. This search guide concept pairs a real person who is skilled at finding information on the Internet with users. This individual is supposedly skilled enough that they will find the exact information you want, instead of the other million results that you don't want to look at. Doesn't this seem a tad odd? Why not just use Google? Because that's what these paid Internet guides are using, isn't it?

Take a peek at some unimpressive results from using Cha-Cha.

I connected to a guide pretty quickly, but sat standing still for Guide Results for 4 minutes. Long enough for me thank you.

On my next try with another Guide, it was like chatting with a school girl who gets paid to search after school. I was supposed to be connected with someone who was a pro in that particular search area, and it tool 4 minutes to find information that I could have found in Google in 1 second.

Here is a little outtake from my interesting chat conversation with the Search Guide. She was looking for information on a Blackberry Pearl for me:

Status: Looking for a guide ...
Status: Connected to guide: Guide
Guide: Welcome to ChaCha!
You: hi
You: looking for bb pearl
You: reviews etc.
You: hello? why is this taking so long?
Status: Session ended.
Status: Looking for a guide ...
Status: Connected to guide: Guide
Guide: Welcome to ChaCha!
You: hi
Guide: Hello, how are you today?
Guide: Are you looking for a pearl colored blackberry?
You: good. how are u?
You: no - the blackberry pearl
Guide: I'm great thanks
Guide: Oh, okay, sorry
Guide: Were you looking to buy it?
You: reviews
Guide: Let's see what we are able to find for you then
You: any reviews? that is their corporate site
You: i want to see what people think of it
Guide: Are those more along the lines of what you were looking for?
You: yes thank you
You: you get paid to help users search?
Guide: Here's one more that claims to be unbiased
You: k
Guide: That's my job
Guide: Are these results sufficient?
You: yes thank u
You: was reading that you get paid to search? how much can you make to help searchers?
Guide: It depends on the length of the search and the level you reach in your searches
Guide: Is there anything else on this topic I can find for you today?
You: o
You: no - thats perfect. thank you
Guide: Have a great day then, and thanks for coming to chacha.com
Guide: Please RATE ME. Thanks for using ChaCha.
Status: Session ended.

Tags: chacha, google, search

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Mark said 11:56AM on 11-11-2006

That's really interesting. If you try searching for "Blackberry Pearl" without the guide, it will bring you reviews and it says "ChaCha Guide Result By: Bonnie K"

This thing has some potential.

OldCat said 12:10PM on 11-11-2006

Everything has a beginning... maybe it will dominate our life in near future, and maybe Google will acquire it, who knows :)

Tanner said 12:38PM on 11-11-2006

Just generally searching on it seems to work faster than with a guide. Either they don't know what they are talking about or the database isn't big enough. Sorta seems like it could do better without the unpaid people so they aren't just looking for money :\

Tobey Cook said 12:45PM on 11-11-2006

This is designed to offer targeted results. Sure, you can do a google search and come up with the information you're looking for, but you have to weed through the results to find what you're looking for. The thing about searching with a guide is you get the good results without having to do all the footwork and someone else takes you through it to make sure you get exactly the information you're looking for.

Keep in mind this is a beta product, so it's still new and still growing, so there's likely to be growing pains along the way.

(disclaimer: I work for ChaCha as a guide.)

Aron said 4:17PM on 11-11-2006

I can't even come close to remembering the name, but this has actually been done before in the go-go 90's there was a search engine that used real-live searchers to help you out. It worked pretty well, but having just discovered boolean operators yesterday, I'm pretty much OK on my own.

Search Expert said 6:08PM on 11-11-2006

ChaCha is a pretty amazing search engine given that it only came on the scene about 9 weeks ago (as an "alpha" version). It's remarkable the progress they've already made. I give it two thumbs up!

Israel said 11:05AM on 11-12-2006

Interesting...
i think this gonna be usefull when you have to search things that give you a thousand of results, like google does.. but i dont know... some people may think that is too much time waiting for the search... how they gonna pay all this guides?... do they have enought of then?!... its a new concept lets see if it gonna survive with the "big one" (google).
i hope it survive, and soon be translated to portuguese, in Brazil it gonna be great...

chachaguide said 7:53PM on 11-12-2006

I don't mind getting paid for my searches, but I certainly don't want to pay for my searches. This company won't last long I guess.

Of course you wouldn't mind getting paid to do searches for people, that's why Chacha has thousands of guides. As for the comment about paying for your searches, I'm not sure I understand. No one pays to have a guide search your query for you. You can search all day on Chacha and it won't cost you a cent. The guides are paid through advertisements on the site, not by asking infoseekers (yourself) to pay for answers. I don't know where you got the idea that you had to pay to have a guide search for you, or even to search our database, without a guide.

mccloud said 9:05AM on 11-14-2006

I am a ChaCha guide.
I feel ChaCha is very useful for older users who aren't quite as computer savvy as the younger generations. It is also useful for students who would rather have someone look for the pertinent information regarding school projects and homework instead of having to look through a thousand results themselves. I have had several students use ChaCha from their actual schools where other search engines may be blocked from use. ChaCha can be accessed from one's work, you sit there and do your job and we search for the information you need allowing you to continue doing other things, giving you only the information you NEED. Can you tell I love ChaCha?

Mark said 12:25AM on 11-20-2006

The whole thiing is a piece of...
I work for them, and its all bait and swtich..beg for good searches that are good, return nothing to us, pay us zilch, and charge us NOW to be paid, if we can even be paid...now one has yet...everyone waits and waits...
GOOD morning america needs to do a real interview...they are being as stupid as all of su working for free....
It trulu suck, and I am sure it wont last, they dont train properly...no one knows whats needed or wanted....
Can believe twe all have been suckered into the worlds biggest internet Joke, gimmick...but really, more like a SCAM....

mccloud said 5:24AM on 11-21-2006

I have been paid. There are alot of kinks still, but things are going swimmingly for me.

blackcoffeenosugar said 4:32PM on 11-23-2006

I don't mind getting paid for my searches, but I certainly don't want to pay for my searches. This company won't last long I guess.

Mary Medaows said 8:11PM on 11-26-2006

Hey you don't pay to have us search for you and for the disgruntled employee above, maybe you should go to the underground and read up on there on how to get paid...if you are gaving probs, ask one of your trainers...I get paid within of seconds of hitting the pay me now button......and have every time....if it's not working for you ask for help...if you don't like it, then find something else you do like : )

Jay said 7:56PM on 11-30-2006

Let's say that this idea does in fact take off. I think the result is that G, Y, etc. will start adding staff to do guided searches as either a paid feature or an advertiser-supproted feature. They already have something to that extent in Yahoo Answers, etc. Answers is not assisted search, but it does help you get a relevant subset of the potential information that you could receive. And not only is it free, but people out there will gladly do it as a hobby given recognition of their efforts.

Jill Pless said 9:35PM on 12-01-2006

I've been with Cha Cha for less than a month and have made abt $150- and I just used it for shopping for Christmas gifts this week! :)

Sure worth it to me :)

ChaChaGuideElizabethG. said 9:50PM on 12-03-2006

I personally work for ChaCha as a guide and am appalled to hear such remarks as I have here. Apparently, alot of you need to get to know ChaCha better before you post in a public forum. For one, ChaCha is still in Beta, meaning it isn't even through all the baby steps yet! And if you search for reviews on ChaCha, you will see how much ChaCha has remarkably improved from the last couple months. Within a few months time, they are already doing pretty well to have gotten this far as fast as they have. I think everybody should go back and read up on ChaCha and give them the credit they deserve! All of ChaCha's guides are still in training so to shoot them down for four minutes of your time is so unfair compared to how long you would have to search through google to get EXACTLY the result you are actually looking for. I know there have been times that all of us have had a hard time searching for something that may be hard to find. Well ChaCha has been training us to search where we would be able to find those answers in minutes instead of hours! Yes that took four minutes that time, but you wait and see, one day you are going to search and somebody is actually going to be trained on the keyword "BB pearl reviews" and then the search will automatically go to that person, and they will already have links set up to give those results to you. Right now, until we have all the bugs and glitches and went through all the baby steps, there is going to be its ups and downs! And it is going to take some time to get every single search out there added as someone's keyword. As for the employee that is complaining of how much ChaCha pays, I am ashamed that you have not been reading up on ChaCha either! Yes, sometimes it may be hard making money on there, but WE KNOW that ChaCha is still in beta and it makes us better employees to be patient. Those of us that do will benefit the most in the long run. Plus alot of you think that we just sit around waiting for searches but we don't! I keep ChaCha in my background and chat and do whatever on the net. Whenever a search comes through, then I might go do a search. ChaCha even encourages us not to just sit there and you being an employee should have known that. I think you all need to get the facts straight before you start dogging a program that is shooting off like a rocket, and has been amazing so many different people around the world. Another thing I would like to add is the CEO, of ChaCha, Scott Jones, has a web site that will tell you how successful he has been for more than two decades now! I think you would find it really interesting here is the link to his page!
http://www.scottajones.com

Please think twice before you down a company that isn't even all the way up and running yet!

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