Internet start-ups seem to appear almost daily, keeping online marketers on their toes for the latest technology and platforms to stay ahead of the competition. A recent search start-up — Hunch — provides another avenue for consumers to find and connect with your business. But because Hunch is fueled by user-generated content stemming from consumers’ experience with your brand, you’ll find benefit in engaging in social monitoring.

In the ever-changing world of consumer search, Hunch, which started on June 15 after a three-month preview, aims to piggyback off of community question-and-answer sites that Google, Microsoft and others attempted to define but failed. In fact, Google Answers ceased operations in 2006, Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales decided to close Wikia Search in March 2009 and Microsoft ended its MSN QnA service in May. Why the low success rate? According to BusinessWeek.com, “A large base of active users [who spend time updating the content] is essential for making these types of sites useful.” Plus, when a major ad-based search engine such as Google doesn’t attract a large audience with its question-and-answer platform, it struggles to make a profit as sponsors pull out for a lack of click-through traffic.

Hunch cofounder Caterina Fake hopes to improve the failed Microsoft and Google models to make online search a more accurate, customized experience. In fact, Hunch is part of a growing movement of harnessing user-generated content to help other consumers find relevant answers for the questions they may have about shopping or even life decisions. “The questions and answers are created by users, and the site uses feedback from the community to refine the relevance of results.”

While Hunch isn’t a major threat to major search engines such as Google, it (and the increasing number of similar sites) is providing an alternate method for consumer searches. Online search has been controlled by keyword queries to this point, but Hunch hopes to lure consumers with functionality that Google and keyword-based search engines haven’t perfected: “[deliver] results tailored to specific human situations and problems without sending users to many different sites on the Internet.” In fact, Hunch is able to attract visitors from Google because its answers show up in search results when users submit keyword queries in the form of questions.

Fake modeled Hunch after the popular question-and-answer site Yahoo! Answers, which she helped create in 2005 following the sale of Flickr (which she also cofounded) to Yahoo! She stated that sites like Hunch offer a more personal search experience. It “arrives at a response after asking users about five to 10 questions. Going a step beyond [the Yahoo!] community-voting model, Hunch determines the best response for…individual [users] based on their past clicks. The site has voluntary survey questions on its [home] page…and…factors in those preferences when…advising you on a decision.”

While Hunch is still relatively new, experts are optimistic that similar sites could potentially detract a small portion of users from Google and other major engines. Overall, community question-and-answer sites could change the way searches are conducted. While traditional search engines such as Microsoft’s Bing are trying to enhance the decision-making process by posting related categories and links for consumer searches, Hunch could help create a new type of search and “enlarge the search pie overall.”