While Mahalo has an interesting approach, its use still does not show that its users view it different from other search options. While the ‘top searches’ has a little more diversity than when I last looked, these searches are still almost totally focussed on zeitgeist. A recent article on Slate magazine looking into the successful failure of Yahoo Answers highlights the space that Mahalo is ideally suited to target.
Yahoo Answers is successful in the number of users that ask questions, and the amount of people that contribute answers to the questions asked. It falls down in delivering quality answers though. While the Slate article goes into more detail, the lack of quality control or editorial oversight allows conflicting answers to remain without clarification or correction. The service is obviously useful to users that cannot find the results they need using other search methods, but the unreliability of the results make Yahoo as a method of asking questionable.
There is a gap in the search market where the question is either complex or broad. These type of searches are either hard to create usable terms for, or produce so many results that it is hard to sort. This is the area where Mahalo can build competitive advantage. By providing guided and/or edited search results they can give answers to common but complex questions, and give starting suggestions for the broader topics.
Perhaps the Mahalo team should concentrate on the Yahoo Answers homepage to get the topics they should concentrate on building pages for. It may be that the Mahalo team is already aware of this, the most common topic on Yahoo Answers is on pregnancy (typically those that imply they are from inexperienced or young and concerned questioners) and the top guide in the Mahalo health section is teen pregnancy. If this is the case the question becomes how to attract the questions that suit the sites advantage. I do not think there is an easy answer to this. By delivering quality results within focussed criteria they will over time attract the use that suits their advantage. Other users will either find other sites, or with their linking to other search engines Mahalo will be ale to act as a meta site for these searches.