Google shuttered its question and answer site, Google Answers, more than two years ago. Yet Yahoo Answers continues to thrive, and putting the phrase “question and answer sites” into Google yields more than a million hits. In this article, we'll look at some of the features you can find on question and answer sites, consider their continued popularity, and try to discover what makes such a site successful.
Question and answer sites benefit from growing popularity. According to a March 2008 report from Hitwise, US visits to question and answer sites increased more than 100 percent for the week ending March 15, 2008, when compared to the same week in 2007. A longer view shows a greater increase; when Hitwise compared February 2008 with February 2006, they found US visits to this category of web site had increased nearly ninefold. At that time, Yahoo ruled this space, with Yahoo! Answers receiving nearly three-quarters of US visits. It was followed by newcomer WikiAnswers, Answerbag, Ask Metafilter and Askville.
The question and answer space is popular enough that Jason Calacanis just added that feature to Mahalo, his human-powered search engine. Dubbed Mahalo Answers, it looks as if it's already seeing some respectable traffic – and it's no wonder, since Search Engine Journal and several other sites have mentioned it. Additionally, it has some notable features that we'll get to in a moment that encourage users to keep coming back.
Why are question and answer sites so popular? Someone actually asked that question on WikiAnswers. The answer given suggested it was human nature. “Some people like to share with others what they know. Some people like to learn by reading the questions and answers.”
Are women more curious than men? Hitwise revealed that a bare majority of US visitors to question and answer sites were female, with one-quarter between the ages of 35-44 and about one-fifth between the ages of 25-34. That's not a lot of statistical evidence from which to draw a conclusion – after all, nearly as many visitors were male. So let's take a closer look at the sites themselves.
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