Deep Jive Interests

So, I’m not disparaging any company that gets 3M or so uniques per month, but its funny.  I remember that when Mahalo was launched some year(s) ago, in its initial incarnation / hype, I remember someone saying something about building its index to the 25k most common terms, and then trying to own those terms in Google.  I can’t find the actual link, so I may have hallucinated that last bit.

Long story short, over the past few years, I know that Mahalo has evolved its strategy, and that it now has a community, has an ongoing video that did have Veronica Belmont at some point, and has an answers-like program as well.

Interesting thing — I have never, ever, found Mahalo in Google’s SERPs since its inception.  Mind you, I’ve never, ever, deliberately looked (past the first few pages, or in specific queries that I knew mahalo was competing for).  But in the casual searches for travel issues, medical topics, geeky topics and what have you, the number of Mahalo pages that came up was zilch.

(Perhaps the same thing happened with you)

… until about two days ago, when I was looking for some help on Ninja Gaiden 2 (playing on “warrior mode” if you must know), there it was! [the query was "Ninja gaiden 2 walkthrough "]

http://www.mahalo.com/ninja-gaiden-2-walkthrough

– ahead of IGN.com, 1UP, and Gametrailers.com.  Impressive!  (For Google.ca, that is)

Not sure what this represents, but it is somewhat odd, since a cursory review of that particular URL in yahoo’s site explorer shows that it has no inbound links except for those that from Mahalo.com.  Weird.

Question of the day, then: when was the last time you saw Mahalo rank for anything?