Advice-based search engines should factor into effective SEO

A recent trend toward non-traditional search engines could make for new opportunities in the field of search engine optimization (SEO).

Rather than purely automated processes, sites like Aardvark, kgb, and ChaCha rely on either social networking or in-house experts to provide users with fewer, but much more relevant search results than those provided by Google or Yahoo. While the new-model search sites have only a small fraction of the volume of their older cousins, experts say that they occupy a small but significant niche.

Aardvark recently unveiled a redesigned site that provides users with better control over which questions they want to answer and which answers they want to receive. Max Ventilla, co-founder of the site, told Venture Beat that Aardvark is designed to provide answers to more subjective questions than can be easily answered by traditional search engines.

Experts say that services like Aardvark, though Ventilla says that the site will use a standard search advertising model for revenue, pose unique new challenges to search engine optimization (SEO) professionals because results will be much less predictable than with Google, Bing or Yahoo.