Hitwise has some interesting insights.
Mahalo receives most of its traffic from Search Engines (76% last week) and sends most of its traffic to Entertainment (37%) and News and Media (19%) websites. Visitors seem particularly interested in games websites such as GameSpot, IGN Cheats and Game FAQs and News and Media websites, in particular, Google News and other online news sources.
Mahalo is gaining momentum slowly but surely.
One has to wonder when the big four search engines (YAGM) are going to start taking sites like Mahalo, Wikia and Chacha seriously. They do represent an alternative way of finding information and Google has had the habit of putting its fingers in every imagineable pie (Google Search, Groups, Video, Audio, Directories etc). I seriously think that Mahalo and Chacha will probably find someone to acquire them in 2008. Microsoft to go Mahalo’s way… Anyone betting?
Mahalo has become an SEO site for video game cheats. I’m not sure Google cares to compete for kingship in that market. If anyone should be concerned it’s About.com (NYT). Mahalo is more directly competing with them.
I think Mahalo is an okay resource, but it’s not anything special for the average or power user. Chacha is ok for beginners, but I found it really slow and annoying. I just don’t think they can scale that business too far.
As a side point I haven’t seen much traffic from Mahalo on any of my sites and, after talking to friends (with sites of all sizes), I don’t know anyone who is pulling in any major traffic from them. So as big as they may be getting I don’t think they search is as fine-tuned as it could be.