A brand-new search engine is looking to employ guides on a part-time basis to help refine its search results.

In news that could be of interest to those working in search engine optimisation, Mahalo launched as an alpha version last month, with its founder Jason McCabe Calacanis claiming that it is the companies aim to "curate" the "wonderful index" of information that Google gathers.

Mahalo works by its employees manually filtering out search results that are deemed irrelevant. It aims to have 10,000 search terms covered by the end of the year, by which stage it will launch as a beta.

With 4,000 terms already covered and with its editors adding 500 more each week, Mahalo now intends to up the ante with the appointment of more staff, e-consultancy reports.

Commenting on the launch last month, PayPal’s Elon Musk said: "Search results edited by objective human experts mean you get all the important information on the first page and don’t have to waste time sorting through low-value links."