mahalo.com is a new "search engine" from Jason Calacanis, formerly head of Weblogs, Inc. It's actually more like a cross between Wikipedia, dmoz.org, about.com, and Squidoo, or something like that. Rather than trying to answer all requests, they're only concentrating on the top 10,000 searches, and then providing pages that supposedly will provide a guide to that topic. Each page is written by a paid "guide". The effort has already been panned, to a good extent because it's not a good idea, and to a good extent due to hard feelings over comments Calacanis previously made about SEO.

Never fear: there are other ways to pan it as well, because it's already starting to mislead those few who visit the site.

The "Mahalo Top 7" at mahalo.com/Immigration_Debate (your about.com mahalo.com guide is "Bill", and he doesn't provide any other clues to his identity) consists of the Geraldo Rivera vs. Bill O'Reilly "debate" (which gets a thumbs up from the Guide), together with articles by NPR, the WaPo, Wikipedia, the BBC, the Christian Science Monitor, and... the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). While the CSM has had some good reports, they've also published some bad ones. The problems with Wikipedia have been presented here many times. And, the other sources are not exactly known for their honesty about this issue. And, as long as I had several minutes and was able to overcome his filibustering, I'm pretty sure I could do a much better job of debating Geraldo than O'Reilly did, especially since both of them are supporters of "reform" and they only differ on how bad they want it to be.

Most of the rest of the Guide's selections are just as bad, including a section falsely entitled "Immigration Opponents" and a link to Jim Gilchrist under the false title of "Anti-Immigration Activism". While it does link to a few opponents of illegal immigration, that's outweighed by the number of supporters and the text descriptions aren't accurate as indicated above.

There's also something strange about mahalo.com/Barack_Obama. Namely, there is not one single piece of negative information I could find. Your guide is Rupak Ginn of rupak.com. In addition to being a Harvard graduate, he's an... actor. Nothing wrong about that, but perhaps someone who's not an actor might be better suited to writing a fair portrait of the candidate.

Our next guide is Nicole Gustas, also a Harvard grad, and she offers mahalo.com/Hillary_Rodham_Clinton In contrast to the Obama article, it includes two negative links in the "Top 7". But, aside from a "Hillary Rodham Clinton Criticism and Controversy" section with three links (one being the "Vote Different" ad), most of the other links are positive.

Then, we turn to this: mahalo.com/Tom_Tancredo, written by Jonathan, a "graduate of UCLA's School of Theater, Film, and Television." (Maybe he could direct Rupak in something.) The page includes two links to tancredowatch.blogspot.com, including one in the "Top 7" section. It wouldn't be so bad if there was just one link, but what makes it worse is it includes a link to Tim Dickinson's highly misleading short article on Tancredo, which included at least one lie. It also includes a link to "Tancredo Speaks Before Pro-Secessionist League of the South" (irregulartimes.com/index.php/archives/2006/09/13/tancredo-league-of-south/), which is little more than a summary of a Southern Poverty Law Center smear and which in turn links to the SPLC. This smear has been debunked, yet the SPLC has not issued a correction. Mahalo - the trusted name in search - is linking to a debunked smear.

Note also that you can submit your own suggestions, but two I saw both had nofollow links on them.

Whether the site is intentionally pushing an agenda or that's just a natural function of those who they've selected as guides isn't clear, but the bottom line is that those few people who visit the site aren't receiving a balanced view of at least the topics discussed above.