Mahalo's algorithm includes
a warm human touch

Search engines are turning to human power to refine the results that appear after a search query, reports IDG News Service.

Human participation ensures that spam sites, sites with too much advertising, or sites that do not credit their sources will not get picked up in the results.

New search engines like Mahalo operate by using the power of people who sift through the Web seeking quality sites. As previously reported, Mahalo can deliver results for 4,000 quality search terms and plans to reach 10,000 by years-end.
Google is also changing its more or less autonomous search engine to include human power in its inner-workings, providing for hazards like spam. Its algorithm to prevent Google bombing, however, is completely automatic.

Yahoo also announced it would be opening the search component of its Panama framework to developer input.