Querycat a FAQ Database

Frequently Asked Questions are a good way of reducing support inquiries on business sites and also for addressing issues that are asked over and over again on forums or support websites.

FAQ's are a great way of answering user questions without having to sacrifice support time to do so. The developers of Querycat decided to create a database of FAQ entries from all over the Internet and make it searchable on the website of the project.They claim to have more than three million questions and answers stored in their database. The site itself uses a basic interface just like other search engines do.

The main site displays only a search field and some site related information. There is zero advertisement on Querycat. You do enter full sentences into the search field, this is different from Google where most users would enter only some of the important keywords for the search. Querycat understands keywords as well and I honestly could not find a difference between entering "How do I install Windows Vista" and "Windows Vista install" in the form as the search results returned the same set of answers.

The hint to use full sentences is probably a way to help inexperienced users formulate their request. They do not have to think about the important keywords of that request but write down exactly what they want.

The search results page looks also similar to the one known from Google and other major search engines. A title that is also the link to the website plus a short description are shown here and a link leads directly to the website that has the FAQ entry on the subject. You can also visit the main site or click on the related button to find related FAQ entries.

Webmasters who maintain a FAQ list may want to ask Querycat to include their FAQ into their database. I can see the value of Querycat especially for inexperienced users. If you know how to search Google properly on the other hand you may be using Google right away and get similar results.

Verdict

Depending on what you search for, you may end up with FAQ entries that are too specialized. This is for instance the case for the first two results of the example query above.

Still, it may be worth a try especially if search engines like Bing or Google cannot produce results that you can work with.

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