My First Experience With the New Hunch Search Engine

Hunch is a new search engine that was designed to help you make decisions and also gets smarter the more you answer the questions it asks.

Cofounder of Flickr, Caterina Fake, is also the cofounder of Hunch so it doesn’t sound like some fly-by-night operation and I’m sure lots of time and thought has gone into it.

When you start there, you’re asked a series of questions. I don’t know how many questions there are, but I answered somewhere around 30 before the site’s server shut down. Maybe more people are coming to the site than they expected?

When it came back online I answered another 10-15 more questions. I actually got a few repeats in there too. I guess it didn’t believe that I’m not a “Playa.”

Ok, so I’m thinking this is enough for the search engine to start giving me some good results. What should I search for now. I type in “Mexican Restaurants in Denver” and… nothing. I can’t get this damn site to work.

I decide to register and try again. This time I answered about 20 questions and then began my search again; “Mexican restaurants in denver.”

It worked!

Then I had to answer a few more questions related to my search. I answered about 6 more questions and then it gave me it’s answer.

Japanese Food? Hmmmm…. Ok, so maybe I don’t want Mexican food after all

I think I just need to spend some more time learning how to use it, but so far I can see the potential. Looks like a fun new tool and I’ll be spending more time with it for sure.