I’ve been doing some research over the last few days and have found that niche search is far from solved. Many market verticals are lacking an effective aggregator for timely content. The tools everyone needs are known, but they haven’t been implemented. Instead of true solutions, we find scraping sites that just suck in content and spit it out un-validated, unverified and unorganized. Because of the high costs of building robust tools, what results is a poor, incomplete collection of information, which quickly becomes stale.

That coupled with inaccurate supporting information, primarily due to high data-set costs, provides a less than desirable experience for users. Mahalo saw this in the generalized search market and put into place human editors who comb the internet looking for the best information and vetting user submissions. The result are guides of information that are informative and helpful.

How long will it be before we see Mahalo style sites targeting niche verticals? Who out there is working on a white label Mahalo which can be reused in these smaller markets?