2 billion. That’s the number of estimated hits that Google gets per day according to the television show
NBC Nightly News
which aired 9/6/09. NBC reported that Google generates over $20 billion US dollars in revenue, or about one cent per click. Other search engines like Yahoo.com and newcomer Bing.com from Microsoft are vying for their own corner of the internet market. So who in the World Wide Web would even try to take on such
search engine mega monsters? How about a small startup company located in Carmel, Indiana, United States called
www.chacha.com? Employing about 50,000 part-time guides (mostly college students), ChaCha is reaching out to a growing consumer market - users who call or text message a query using mobile phones (like Blackberry and iPhone). The ChaCha website sorts
questions into several categories, such as Celebrities, Entertainment, Style & Beauty, Business, Finance, and Health. Questions range from the serious (How long can humans survive without air?) to the comical (How much does the fattest dog weigh?).
So how does ChaCha compare to the established search engines? To find out, I typed in keywords “Michael Jackson” into each one. Here are the results:
ChaCha = 15,859 queries plus answers in an up-to-the-minute list, such as “What is Micheal Jackson’s favorite color?” and “Did Michael Jackson and Madonna ever perform together?” Can sort questions by Relevance or by Date.
Google = 167,000,000 websites containing the keyword, plus sponsored links, images and videos of Michael
Bing = 203,000,000 hits about Michael, plus sponsored sites, and Related Searches
Yahoo = 732,000,000 sites plus images
If texting is your modus operandi, then give ChaCha a try. With a tagline “ur mobile BFF”, the startup www.ChaCha.com seems to be off to a good start.