Our Story
ChaCha has set out to create a better search engine. But this is no easy task and will take some time to be perfected.
Scott Jones and Brad Bostic, two dynamic entrepreneurs, were not satisfied with millions of irrelevant search results and thought there could be a better experience. So the ChaCha team has been hard at work to create:
A smart search engine powered by human intelligence.
A place to find exactly what you're looking for without sifting through millions of results.
Intelligent search results from people who are knowledgeable about the very thing you are looking for.
Remember, ChaCha is all about making the web more accessible, by giving you the most relevant results you need. And it's your choice whether to search with or without a guide. So come join our experiment and have some fun!
Why Search with a Guide?
By searching with a Guide your query is sent to a real person who is skilled at finding information on the internet and knowledgable on the subject at hand so that you get the few exact results you want, not the millions of results you don't.
ChaCha only provides quality, human approved results.
How does it work?
When your query is submitted it is sent to a Guide who is knowledgable in the topic you're searching.
Because we're so new, we have a limited pool of Guides to field these questions so you may at times be connected to a Guide who is not necessarily an expert on the subject. Rest assured that the Guide is still an expert in internet search and will most likely find you exactly what you need. If not, you may be transferred to a Guide who may have better insight into your question.
Who gets my query?
When your query is submitted, an alert is sent to all appropriate Guides who are currently signed in to the system. Because the Guides can see the question you submit, you can submit your question in natural language, just like you'd ask any person a question.
It also means that if you submit a question filled with non-specifics (like "foot") nonsensicals (like "asdfjlakjf"), you will most likely not get connected to a Guide because no one will accept it. Same goes for any profanity.
If you are at all profane or offensive during the chat session, your Guide will press a "Report Abuse" button, your IP address and the chat session will be logged, and you can prevented from using ChaCha in the future.
What do I do once I've asked my question?
Once connected to a Guide you can chat with him/her to clarify your question. Discussing your question will get more precise results than any other search engine can deliver.
Every time you use ChaCha it gets better
The more you use ChaCha, the smarter and faster ChaCha becomes! Because ChaCha indexes all the questions that are asked and associates them with the search engines and resources used by Guides, and the links visited by the users, ChaCha knows where to look and what the best human-approved resources are for each question or topic.
Why should I trust this guide?
The primary reason is that we pay them and their pay is directly related to their performance. At the end of every session, you can select between one and five stars to rate their performance. While we expect you to be honest when rating a Guide, ChaCha can also detect any needlessly malicious ratings.
Another reason is that everybody knows a lot about something - ChaCha is able to connect you with the somebody who knows the something you want to know. Not only can they point you in the right direction, we've often found that communicating with a Guide can expand your general knowledge on the subject or even turn you on to new or different information that's even more relevant to what you're searching for.
