I know you don't want to go into specifics, but it would be helpful here.
It seems to me that there shouldn't even be a page with an 'incorrect' or misspelled name out there. There should not be two pages on the same subject. The misspelling should not even be a managed page. That makes no sense.

But I don't have quite enough information to say one way or another because 1. I'm not a Mahalo employee and 2. I don't know the details. And maybe there is a valid reason to have two pages on the same topic. I don't know.

How long ago did you e-mail mahalo? I'd e-mail again if it's been over a day.
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I'm a bit confused with this whole "redirect" thing thing too.

Mahalo is a human powered search engine. Folks compose pages with comprehensive and accurate information. Sounds great. But redirects and the way that they're currently being used is a throwback to bot powered SERP's and are a major downfall.

It's possible for me to think of a small change to the title of any page. The leader board reports that Obama Joker Poster is currently the highest earning page. Redirects have been setup. However, there's nothing stopping me from creating Obama Joker Photo right now.

This adds a frustrating layer of "gaming" and I think really hurts the user experience here.

If I search Mahalo for "Obama Joker Photo", the results don't mention Mahalo's Obama Joker Poster page at all:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2494/3795145851_b1eb094c4c_o.jpg

This means that unless someone comes to Mahalo and types in the exact page title or one of the redirects that have been setup, they won't see the page. It gets worse when we think about page creation... if I do a Mahalo search for the topic of a page make sure that I'm not stepping on anyone's toes, it again doesn't mention anything about similar pages. I'm left to use Google's site specific search and hope that the page is indexed by them.

I understand that categorizing similar pages is technically very difficult to do automatically. Google's search engine was founded on this logic. However, this limitation renders the current Mahalo search useless. There is no way that a page manager will ever create an adequate number of redirects. Worse than that, people who use the Mahalo search functionality are left with only content pulls from other websites.

I think that it would be a lot better if 1 (and only one) page manager was responsible for any single topic.

The only conclusion that I can draw is that the Mahalo search engine is currently inadequate. Mahalo relies on the inedexing, categorization, ranking and importantly traffic of other search such as Google. I personally have a very tough time doing any sort of research using the Mahalo SE. I can only imagine how someone new to the system must feel.
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There are a lot of good issues being brought up in this thread. I agree that if there is a misspelled title that it should redirect to the appropriate title.

I also agree about the Mahalo search function not being adequate for finding similar pages. Is there some way Mahalo can use the google related pages search? That method seems to work better. I know right now when you seach Mahalo for a topic, if you wait, it sometimes brings up related pages, but this is not always reliable.

Another important issue is small variations of topics and weather they should be separate pages or redirected to one page. I think that once a person has claimed a topic, they should get the similar redirects. It's true that separate pages will pull in more searches and make more money overall, but it doesn't really seem fair to the person who claimed the topic 1st.

Mahalo is still a new system and I don't really know the answer, but that's why it is good to have these kinds of discussions.
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If Mahalo is looking to be a reference source, like Wikipedia-- then one page per topic-- makes sense.

If Mahalo wants to maximize ad revenue - then one page per search term may make sense eHow even permits multiple pages on the same search term, allowing the "cream" to rise to the top. If you search How to make chicken pot pie on Google, eHow winds up with the top two results, and an expand box to "see more results on eHow".

I could see Mahalo moving towards a hybrid model-- with one page per topic on reference terms, such as "General Motors" with "GM" as a redirect, but multiple terms such as "Fertilizer Coupons" "Fertilizer Deals" and "Fertilizer" Discounts" on marketing topics.
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when i first found mahalo i thought it was a lot like wikipedia-- users edit pages and put articles up about topics, but there were other outgoing links and things added...

as i got more involved i realized that mahalo is actually a search engine, that just has articles on the topics and pages that real humans make and edit.

there is a huge difference between the two.

if 1000 people search on "Obama Joker Poster" and 950 search on "Obama Joker Photo" and we use a redirect to make the photo term point to the poster page, the only ones looking for the photo that will make it to the poster page are those visitors to mahalo that type it into the mahalo search.

we lose any portion of the photo search engine traffic that might have been caught by the photo page if it was separate. by doing separate---and DIFFERENT-- pages for the two terms, we can potentially rank for both terms and bring in 1950 visitors.

further, by linking the two pages together as relevant pages, google and other search engines will begin to see mahalo as an authority on the subject, and the rank can rise even further.

so, i really don't think that any redirects should be done unless it is like book and books, where one is the plural of the other. most of the time search engines make no distinction here, but i advocate either making a standard where one tense either always redirects into the other, or the tense that gets the biggest search volume is the page name, just to catch traffic from those search engines that do differentiate.

let me give you a real example from mahalo: automobiles and cars

currently there is a page on automobiles but not cars. cars redirects to automobiles. this makes perfect sense if you are wikipedia, but not as a search engine.

let me explain my thinking here...

using a breakdown of wordtracker's search results, the term automobile gets 2023 searches a day across the search engines, and automobiles gets 531. makes perfect sense to redirect the plural to the singular

however, when you type in "car" the results are quite amazing. the term cars gets a whopping 45,746 average searches EVERY SINGLE DAY and car gets14,443. makes sense to redirect car to cars to me because they are not different enough to have different pages, most search engines won't differentiate, but the plural gets more searches so we might catch a bit of extra traffic from any that do.

now... by making cars and car redirect to automobiles, we have potentially lost being ranked anywhere near the top for any search engine for those terms, so we are potentially losing over 60,000 visitors a day just because of a redirect.

if the two pages were separate, yet linking as related mahalo pages, we would be seen as more of an authority on the subject and could potentially be listed twice in the top ten of a search engine, once for each page, which would get us a LOT more traffic. this is especially true if you use both keywords throughout the text in both pages. you might rank for both terms.

there is nothing to stop one page manager from making both pages, and nothing to stop two different people from making similar pages. unless the page just has a lot better build to it and is more relevant for your particular term, then it should not pull traffic from your page, but rather pull additional traffic in that we otherwise would have lost.

i recommend sending a request to the other page manager and asking for a related pages link to your page, and you reciprocate. you both get a boost that way.

this is just my two cents, and i realize that a lot of pages have been made years ago... but going forward i think this practice could draw a LOT more traffic into mahalo
Source(s):
my two cents and my personal experience both with search engines and mahalo...

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