Q: So why do you think Google Answers failed?
A: Well, I can certainly speculate. I just don't think GA ever built up the traffic it needed to be self-sustaining. GA is the type of service that people need once in a while...like the Yellow Pages. But when they need it, they also need to be aware of the service, and they need to be able to find it without much effort.
Google made it necessary for users to more or less stumble into Google Answers, as there really weren't any easy-access links to the service. It was an odd choice...I would have thought that -- Google Answers being one of the few services that Google graduated out of beta -- they would have backed it up with the tools it needed to grow. In the final analysis, the service was poorly promoted, and just couldn't build the type of traffic it needed.
Q: But traffic at GA's competitor, Yahoo Answers, is booming.
A: And Yahoo's active promotion of their Q&A service is a big reason for that...Yahoo Answers has been a prominent feature on Yahoo's main page since the service was launched. But another reason is that Yahoo Answers is a fundamentally different sort of creature. It's designed to be a social gathering site, more than a place to get well-researched, high-quality answers from search experts.
The only similarity between the Google Answers and Yahoo Answers is in their names. Otherwise, there's no real comparison, and it's just not appropriate to say 'Yahoo won, Google lost'. At Google Answers, I might have spent a week researching a customer's question, and preparing a formal answer. I just don't think you find that sort of professional effort at Yahoo Answers.
Q: Don't you think the fact that Yahoo Answers is free, and Google Answers charged a fee has a lot to do with it?
A: Actually, No! I've seen a lot of news articles claiming that GA was doomed, because -- obviously -- who would pay for something they can get for free?. But that's just intellectually lazy. Saying that 'no one will pay for research' when there are free services around is silly. That's what they said about cable TV and bottled water, and they were dead wrong. Imagine thinking that amazon.com couldn't possibly succeed because can get books for free at the library!
People pay for things all the time, even if there are free alternatives available. They do it because of quality, convenience, trust, professionalism, and a host of other reasons. A free service like Yahoo Answers is terrific. But there is plenty of room for high-quality fee based services as well, as I expect to demonstrate with the launch of XooxleAnswers.
Q: So you see an active future for a researcher-for-hire niche in the world of e-commerce?
A: Definitely. There are a billion internet users out there, and sooner or later they all have a question they need an answer to, something so important they are willing to pay for the service. Even if they only need such a service, say, once every five years, that's still an enormous market. The trick is, making sure they can find you when the need arises. XooxleAnswers can step in to fill the void left by the demise of Google Answers. A lot of other former Google Answers researchers are gearing up as well, and I think we'll eventually see a number of fee-based Q&A services thriving on the internet.
Q: Tell me a bit more about XooxleAnswers.
A: XooxleAnswers -- I sometimes call it Xooxle, or simply...XA -- can handle an amazing variety of research tasks, from a simple $10 query, to a complex research project costing $1,000 or more. I do much of the research myself, but if a question comes up that's better handled by another researcher, XooxleAnswers reaches out to the community of former Google Answer researchers to match up the best skills for a particular question. We handle business, legal, personal, academic and many other research topics. Here are a few of the more common areas we work in:
Business: Due diligence, competitive intelligence, corporate exectutive contact information, company comparisions, market research, company mailing lists.
Intellectual Property: Patent searches, prior art, copyright and trademark questions, infringement issues, fair use, public domain materials, international patents, trademark and copyright in Europe (EU), Japan, Australia and elsewhere.
Legal: Libel, slander, defamation, real estate, environmental regulations, lawsuits, bankruptcies, case retrieval, case law research, international law.
Personal: People-finding, computer help, geneaology and ancestors, tracking down sports stories, what happened the day I was born, job-hunting.
Academic: Historical sources, tracking/finding quotations and citations, census and demographic analysis, primary references, identifying top schools, universities, and professors.
List Generation: Mailing lists, keyword lists, and "Top 100" style lists for companies, publications, books, magazines, popular music, hotels, corporate executives, etc.
Health: Medical procedures, drugs and medicines, clinical trials, emerging technologies, FDA procedures, alternative therapies and treatments, finding the best hospital and doctor.
These Q&A's can be used freely by anyone -- please include a link to this page and an appropriate attribution to David Sarokin at XooxleAnswers.com