Do you mean a toolbar like a Google or Yahoo toolbar, as a browser add-in?

My thoughts...

1) I don't use such toolbars, my browser already has a search box, plus I have some search engines on my bookmarks bar.

2) I don't use Mahalo for general search In fact I use Google even to search Mahalo. There would have to be a much greater chance of getting a hit before I looked in Mahalo before Google. That's unlikely to ever happen.

3) If there were a Mahalo tool that did the Google search for me, and also meshed those neatly with Mahalo results, that might be of interest.

4) Personally I'm not into inviting my friends along to things for money. I would tell them about it if it was great, but if anything my desire to do so might be reduced by getting a few bucks for it.
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I'm all for more ways to earn points and dollars here on Mahalo, so I like the idea. Now does this include regular searches on the site, or do you have to install a special toolbar and do searches from there?

A $1 for 1000 searches is ok, but I don't see that as being a huge incentive for people. I have been fairly active for months here on Mahalo and I'm only about a quarter of the way to 1000 searches. So that is going to take a really long time to make it to $1.

It would go faster with friends searches, but I think there could be a better affiliate program besides searches. How about incentive for the amount of points or dollars a friend makes who you have invited to join. I think that would be more effective. Most people here are striving for points and dollars, not searches.
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I would definitely not link the reward to how many friends installed the toolbar, as I've seen that fail too many times before. People work hard to get their friends to install the toolbar, but it's never used. The key should be in getting people to use Mahalo--maybe a reward for every user you invite who reaches the purple belt level?
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0.
The Mahalo search needs to be drastically improved before a reward / encouragement program would be useful.

This is all just off the top of my head... if you'd like me to think deeply about this and provide some suggestions and ideas that aren't superficial, just ask... but I think that you're just trying to "get a feel" for this idea, so I've only composed comments rather than fully formed thoughts.

1.
How would you construct a search rewards program?
I think that you've conceived it pretty well... however the term "toolbar" scares away a lot of folks who have been on the Internet for any amount of time. Also, the fact that you're talking about a physical, installed toolbar raises a couple of questions.

I think that Mahalo would do really well with "custom search" and paid inclusion. Basically, promote a Mahalo search box to blogs. Tell the owners / webmasters that they'll be paid for searches AND they can insert (relevant) content into the SERP's. This would be really beneficial for say a Real Estate blog like curbed where they could discuss a story and then provide the type of journalistic support that many blog articles are missing in the form of linked "more information" Mahalo SERP's. The SERP's would also give bloggers (and other similar folks) another source of revenue... they're money grubbing hungry bastards... so they'd like this if the analytics were proven.

2. Have you participated in any other search/toolbar rewards programs? How did it go?

Yes I have participated in other similar programs. Generally, the success was mediocre at best and the programs eventually turned to less savory but higher revenue sources of income.

3. Would you participate?

Absolutely! I love new stuff.

4. How many people do you think you could get to install the toolbar/to use Mahalo search?

Now this is where it gets funny for me... I will not recommend a product or service that I do not 100% believe in. It takes a long time for me to tell my friends, family, acquaintances, fans (all 2 of them), and heck even my twitter followers about something.

I love new products but I love the trust that people have in me even more. This question in itself makes me a bit nervous... the last time I was asked to give an "install base estimate"... well lets just say that was on the gray side of the line where I don't walk :)
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One, paying/rewarding me for my friends to sign up and for their searches sounds a bit like a pyramid scheme to me. So I would say don't bother.

Truthfully with the way Mahalo 2.0 has been working for me or shall I say Not working smoothly, I Have not mentioned it to anyone. Selfishly, I don't need my credibility damaged by a bumpy experience. I have been pulling back from even my usage of the product.

Two, I'm with ChrisThomson. Mahalo search has much to be desired. I have found that many people have been using google to search mahalo. This has to be a sad state of affairs for a search engine. I've been disappointed with Mahalo search since I found Mahalo over a year ago.

Example Question: why can't I find All mahalo pages that may be related to my search term? Yes, there is a related pages section, but guess what? Not all related pages are listed.

Try for example the term "paper". You WILL get the Serp for Paper. But you will not get "How to Make Paper" "How to write a Research Paper" (oops second time around I forgot the word 'research' and had to hunt for it again using "site:Mahalo.com SEARCHTERM" ) pages already written on Mahalo. Which may be what I was looking for in the first place.

Maybe this wasn't the place for all this. However, Before you try to make a reward system the product itself has to be better: Maybe the reward in and of itself.

My two bits.
Source(s):
Mahalo.com
http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-make-paper
http://www.mahalo.com/paper
http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-write-a-research-paper

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Regarding the deficiencies of Mahalo Search, couple of thoughts:

a) Sounds like the biggest complaint is that you would love to find RELATED Mahalo pages in the event of a non-exact match or no redirect (the whole US not taking you to the United States of America issue mentioned above).

If we provided a decent RELATED MAHALO SEARCHES bar at the top of the 'no result' page with best 4 - 6 guesses, and they were decent, would that solve it?

b) Second, I trust the 'Did You Mean ... ?' adequately services misspellings? Or not?

c) Mahalo search -- unlike Google search -- is essentially *Site Search* of Mahalo.com's Topic Pages. This is fundamentally different from Google, Bing, etc. each of whom dynamically assembled their links at result-time. We're indexing our own pages -- hence, we are more wikipedia-like. This makes things a bit thornier in some ways, better in others.

But yeah -- let's talk about this. I want this to get better also!
- M
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Didn't Google pay web site operators if their end users installed the Google Toolbar via their site, using special codes? Personally, I know it is hard to have your 'friends' download, install, and use third party browser plugins and toolbars, so it should be be M$1 per install with no threshold for payment... meaning you get 3 friends to use it, you immediately get M$3.

Another route, in addition to a toolbar, is to do what Google does for Custom Search Engine that can integrate with and into a blog. I really see that you will get more traction if there is you approach bloggers with the right incentives for them to add widgets and controls on their websites to Mahalo just like Google has done with Adsense and Custom Search Engine.

Another eager community is the developer community. Once there is a API for developer to leverage Mahalo data, integrate with their current services, and develop application on top and side by side Mahalo it would open up new avenues to new users.
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Ok, I'm not gonna do the 1234 answer style because I do not have answers to all the questions...
How about doing something like swagbucks? Do searches using the toolbar, and you sometimes get some mahalo bucks kinda thing. It's pretty random, there's not set number of searches before you get a buck..
Just a thought:)
Source(s):
swagbucks.com

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I have to say that Mahalo has changed a lot since I first game to the Greenhouse. There are some new things I like and others I miss from the good ole days. You are right Jason... it doesn't look like much of an incentive. It seems to me that the incentives to work hard here are becoming few and far between.... cutting back on the number of pages we can claim seems to leave no real incentive to work hard to make a new belt level. And the way you are describing this doesn't seem to be a WOW... kind of moment. The only people that I have been able to encourage to come and use Mahalo... are elderly people who are afraid of their computers.... I have told them that it is very user friendly... especially for those who have little experience surfing the web. Just wondering what the demographics are of those who frequent Mahalo. Would like to see more Mahalo incentives.
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Perhaps a better alternative would be to create a Firefox/IE plugin that inserts Mahalo results at the top of normal Google.com results - it would drive traffic to Mahalo, it wouldn't take up precious browser space, and once installed, people would keep coming back!

In addition, with a plugin you can enable stuff like select a word > right click > lookup on Mahalo.

You could also integrate Mahalo content into Wikipedia pages (all with the intention of driving traffic to Mahalo).

If you're interested, I can make this in a few days (at least the Firefox version - Internet Explorer is more difficult).
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No Idea but would probably attract internet savvies.

This will definitly work in this recession period. Hope it will be big idea.

Best of Luck. Will look forward for this.
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This reminds me of Agloco, "Get Paid to Surf the Web." I referred some of my friends but got nothing from them. But unlike your idea, Agloco installs another taskbar in your screen to monitor the time you spent browsing the internet. This taskbar is similar to a toolbar with advertisements and some other stuffs related to Agloco.

1. How would you construct a search rewards program?
-a Mahalo Dollar for every 1,000 searches + 1 MD for each referral is good enough but fraud must be strictly monitored. Programmers may automate the system and some may create different accounts to increase their referrals.

2. Have you participated in any other search/toolbar rewards programs? How did it go?
Yup, I joined Agloco but I was fooled by this company. But Mahalo, with all of its resources, will surely be successful in this project.

3. Would you participate?
Yes.

4. How many people do you think you could get to install the toolbar/to use Mahalo search?
I would refer my friends from social networking sites like facebook and twitter.
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It's a great idea to do something like this, but to invite people who don't have much interest to join on their own will fill Mahalo with a lot of non-passionate people to just sign on to "make a quick buck". Just a thought ...
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@jasoncalacanis said:
"The concept being that you get a Mahalo Dollar for every 1,000 searches you do on Mahalo, as well as a Mahalo Dollar for every 1,000 searches your friends do."

I´ve been here answering and surfing like hell ...say what?... 2 or 3 weeks? In all 1.400 visited sites.... by that same token I should equally match the figure if I lure 7 friends with the same need and desire to come to Mahalo (9.800 searches a month, 117.600 a year) and I should earn $117... but if only Google gets aside.

My thinking: this is as static as a dead duck in a pond. I´ll be a rock statue before reaching that quota. All in all just by being theoretical, but in reality, ¿how many friends of mine do you think will have the need or feel the inclination to include the Mahalo cluttering toolbar, when they already dismissed other annoying such features?

The earnings are not tempting enough for me as to promoting Mahalo to my dear friends. I´m new to Mahalo (almost entered a year ago). For what I´m seeing everyone is complaining for the 2 page managing limit. If this is a reading about how Mahalo is performing, am afraid your asking for the Toolbar is another desperate sign that things are not going the way Mahalo planed. ¿Problems in paradise?

@jasoncalacanis said:
"..We did this once before and it was very successful (although it was for our Mahalo social bookmarking project which never really took off)."

Seems that you are asking because you are already resurrecting the project. ¿Your asking is just a last minute poll before the implementation of the feature?

@robbrown said:
"..they're (Mahalo) focusing on the content (the SERP's / result pages) before making their search process and algorithm perfect. What use is searching if all you find are inadequate results?"

Exactly. With this toolbar project you will only get sloppy results from unreliable sources and not from the "human powered engine" Mahalo envisioned.

@jasoncalacanis, as for 1, 2, 3 and 4... I´m not an expert on the field, but I am a good psychologist. People don´t want to clutter their desktop space with another annoying search toolbar; stick to the basics; strengthen the 25% of the web page content that really matters; eliminate the 2 page management limit; encourage actual Mahalo collaborators base pool; don´t became another pyramidal level market enterprise such as Amway, Omnilife, Agel or behave like spammy social networks like Facebook, Hi 5 or MySpace (I´m tired of being fooled by this companies), don´t get desperate on us.

I think Mahalo will implement the feature no matter what we say here. Perhaps somebody will gave you some good clues on "how to?" for the Toolbar/search rewards program, but I don´t see it a as quality solution for Mahalo´s human powered engine doctrine.
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If I search for an item in mahalo, I have to go to the main page to find out if there is a page available for what I am searching for.
If I am in the mahalo answer page, it whill show the related questions only. Why can't it show all of those, like the pages created in that subject and the questions associated with it?
Every time I type mahalo in here, it shows red underline as if it is a spelling mistake.
$1 for 1000 searches is very low right now. I will search in google instead and save time.
Once it works fast like google/other search engines, yes, it can be worth for the time.
It will also make sense to make friends in Mahalo. Right now nobody is interested in making friends in Mahalo.
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I'm sorry, but although I really like Mahalo and the atmosphere here, I personally would not install a Mahalo toolbar on my laptop. My screen is already inordinately cluttered from all sorts of stuff!

I can't imagine myself asking friends to install it either - especially if I don't use it. I would sound desperate for referrals and I have far too much pride, not to mention my desire for privacy - do my friends need to know what I do in my spare time? LOL

I tend to agree that one unexpected and unwanted result would be a lot of unmotivated people signing up and then just fading away... sort of like Twitter's current rate of attrition. Not too good a sign! Or asking and answering questions any-old-way just to make a buck or points or whatever... sort of like Ask****e.

This being said, a really efficient and accurate search engine facility would be a major plus, a thing of real value for us all.
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I'm still very new to Mahalo, so I'm not sure if I'd use this site as my primary search engine, but I do use a toolbar from Swagbucks.com that offers points and rewards for searches. In exchange for the points you earn, or the 'swagbucks' you can exchange them for gift cards and prizes.

I haven't cashed out on anything yet, but it's a fun incentive to use the toolbar. I personally use my swagbucks toolbar for search first, so I can hopefully find the results I'm looking for, and earn points at the same time, but I'd say about half the time, I end up searching google afterwords instead, to find a good answer to my question.

I like that you can install their toolbar though, and if Mahalo had one, I might consider installing it too.

One Mahalo dollar for every 1000 searches though sounds like an awful lot of searching. I have no idea how long it would take me to reach that amount, and that in itself might be a little bit of a detour for using it as a primary search. The results that Mahalo provides would need to be spot on pretty regularly, for me to use it as a primary searching tool - and I'm still a little too new to this site to know if Mahalo can fill all of my searching needs. So far, I'm sort of using this site the same as I'd use MSN... for information about what's going on lately, and to look at topics of interest.

As far as recruiting friends, I'm not sure that I'm the best at doing such things. I've tried in the past to get friends to join programs I've tried, but not a lot of luck. Most of the people I know online are primarily artists... this is just something I do on the side, as I have an interest in freelance writing as well as supplementing my income.
Source(s):
http://swagbucks.com/?cmd=sb-register&rb=325688

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