Obviously, we are moving into a new mashable phase. Mahalo has gotten incredible press. The quality currently in the tail is nowhere. I have seen a few query results that were surprisingly good given that these are not experts in the query I searched. I wouldn't discount them that quickly.

Hi Aaron,

This is a great suggestion for creating good quality content. Don't you think that many companies do not struggle with creating good content as much as with marketing that content?

It might be just a little late, but I did not understand the link to "creating a custom topical search engine"

Hi Khalid,

Let me jump in and see if I can answer your question about not understanding the link "creating a custom topical search engine" (Aaron, anyone else, please correct me if I'm wrong).

If you follow the link in his post; "harnessing the power of Google to_____" you'll find a really impressive (to me) piece about leveraging Google to find what you need. In that article they mention:

Google’s Custom Search Engine utility allows us to use the power of Google’s search technology and create a custom search engine. We took advantage of this opportunity and a human-edited searchable database was created by focusing only on high quality scholarship and financial aid related websites. Web sites that were useful and informative were hand picked, and these are the sites that are being shown in the search results. It took a long time to compile the list in the database, but our Scholarship Search Engine will save students even more time.

So, the link "creating a custom topical search engine" refers directly to that quote, they've created a custom search engine (Google's) that only searches sites they have hand picked (instead of going to Google's site and searching the entire web).

Hope that cleared some things up! Although my lack of clarity may have confused the issue even further...

It was too late! The minute I read the post again, it all made sense :)