Contrary to what these initial comments are suggesting, Mahalo isn't duplicating content across all of these sites. These sites are each targeted at specific verticals, and (are intended to) only have questions and answers related to that vertical. It's a strategy that worked for Calacanis at Weblogs, Inc. (to a degree--eventually a lot of superniche blogs were shuttered or consolidated into the higher-profile brands) and I suspect it'll work again.
As for Google's rankings, I don't think these sites are any worse off than the Stack Exchange sites, which all share the same basic design and markup and many of the same boilerplate About, etc. pages.
Is it great for users, i.e. people actually trying to find answers? Well, that's an open question. I think ultimately it is because someone looking for FarmVille answers (yes, Mahalo has such a site, and yes, an incredible number of people have FarmVille questions) is going to get more relevant results than they'll find on Mahalo Answers proper. If these sites didn't exist would they find better, or faster, answers to their questions? I think sometimes they would, sometimes they wouldn't. Generally answers on Mahalo Answers are higher-quality than, say, Yahoo! Answers, which I see showing up in the results for many of my Google searches.
I don't blame anyone for disliking the practice--it does have a bit of a smell--but I do think it's a good business decision for Calacanis et al.
(Disclosure: I used to work for Jason Calacanis at Weblogs, Inc. and Propeller (nee Netscape.com) and enjoyed the experience. I haven't talked to him in a couple years but I bet if I called him up he'd do me a solid. Oh, I was also an early Mahalo beta-tester and use Mahalo Answers once every couple of months.)
As for Google's rankings, I don't think these sites are any worse off than the Stack Exchange sites, which all share the same basic design and markup and many of the same boilerplate About, etc. pages.
Is it great for users, i.e. people actually trying to find answers? Well, that's an open question. I think ultimately it is because someone looking for FarmVille answers (yes, Mahalo has such a site, and yes, an incredible number of people have FarmVille questions) is going to get more relevant results than they'll find on Mahalo Answers proper. If these sites didn't exist would they find better, or faster, answers to their questions? I think sometimes they would, sometimes they wouldn't. Generally answers on Mahalo Answers are higher-quality than, say, Yahoo! Answers, which I see showing up in the results for many of my Google searches.
I don't blame anyone for disliking the practice--it does have a bit of a smell--but I do think it's a good business decision for Calacanis et al.
(Disclosure: I used to work for Jason Calacanis at Weblogs, Inc. and Propeller (nee Netscape.com) and enjoyed the experience. I haven't talked to him in a couple years but I bet if I called him up he'd do me a solid. Oh, I was also an early Mahalo beta-tester and use Mahalo Answers once every couple of months.)