When you need a precise answer to a question, Google search can only go so far. Sure, you can sometimes find what you need with a series of related queries, but wouldn’t it be nice to simply get your question answered right away? Some blogs have been delivering answers to readers’ questions for quite some time; several specialized services for answering questions, like Yahoo! Answers, have appeared, and lately the semantic search engines are the talk of the town. With all these services, it’s easy to get lost. Here’s a list of free resources you might want to look at if you need some answers. *note: since there is a huge amount of sites out there trying to give some sort of answers, the focus here will be on sites which let users actively participate by asking questions.

Search engines

Hakia - touted the world’s first semantic search engine, Hakia supposedly understands complex queries and questions like ‘Where do I find a good place to dine in Denver’, ‘What’s the capital of China’, or ‘What is this Twitter thing everyone is talking about’. It’s not bad, but it gives mixed results. See R/WW’s detailed coverage of Hakia here.

ChaCha - a very different kind of search engine with a hard-to-sustain business model, ChaCha offers search with live people, called ‘Guides’, helping the users to find what they want. It reminds me a bit too much of tech-support, but it might be useful if you happen to get a good guide.

SHOE - Simple HTML Ontology Extensions - not really a very usable solution at this point, but more of a project to keep an eye on in the future. By adding special XML tags to their webpages, webmasters enable SHOE to index them in a more intelligent way.

Blogs

Lifehacker - the mother of all tip blogs, Lifehacker won’t directly answer your questions, but it fosters an active community and rewards, reacts and sometimes responds to intelligent comments. Lifehacker is daily churning out a huge amount of posts, so it might have your question already answered in its archives.

Ask Leo - ask a technology-related question, and Leo answers. Simple and quite effective.

43folders and Lifehack are blogs in the similar vein as Lifehacker: giving simple instructions on getting things done. Users cannot directly ask questions, but both sites have forums on which you can actively participate.

Community answers

Answerbag - a Q&A site meets Digg. Both questions and answers can be voted on or even marked as offensive/spam. Judging from the ‘Newest arrivals’ section, Answerbag is a really busy site with questions being answered every couple of seconds, which makes it one of the most popular sites with Digg-like functionality out there. Just like Digg content, which consists of everything and everything in between, the questions and answers on Answerbag range from useful to completely silly.

AllExperts - claimed by the founders to be the oldest and largest Q&A service on the net, AllExperts lets users ask the questions while the volunteers answer them for free. The site’s design is a bit old-school, but actual content is quite good and there’s lots of it.

Askeet - Similar to Answerbag. After registration, users can ask questions on any topic. Questions and the answers to them can be voted on by users, and it’s all presented in a very clean layout. There aren’t that many questions at the time of this writing, but there doesn’t seem to be a lack of people willing to answer new ones.

Askville Amazon’s Askville follows the simple formula, where anyone can ask questions of any kind, and anyone can answer. The site’s simplicity will appeal to many, while the main difference between Askville and other similar sites is the possibility of adding related recommendations - actual items from Amazon’s catalog - into your answers.

BitWine - different from the other sites in this group because instead of asking questions, users are encouraged to communicated with a live person - an advisor - directly. Advisors are available in a wide array of different categories, and while some offer their expertise for free, others charge for their services, with the fees usually being very reasonable.

*update: incidentally, just hours after finishing this article I was contacted by the CEO of CrowdRules, a new Q&A site. It would be a shame not to include it in this list.
CrowdRules lets members ask questions, with a couple of innovative features. First, answers are in video form, while other forms (images, text) are coming soon. The process of voting is also a bit different, so here’s a quote from David Moss, the CEO of CrowdRules: “CrowdRules then selects videos for crowd members to rate. Information cascades - things that bias voting - are blocked. That means members can’t find out how others have voted. They don’t know the number of views, or how others have rated a video. They can’t send a link to game the vote. And all videos get an equal number of votes. When voting ends, results are aggregated into a ranked list.” CrowdRules is an interesting service which tries to offer something new in this field and it’s definitely one to keep an eye on in the future.

Google Answers - although officially a retired service (a very rare occurrence at Google), Google Answers still contains thousands of searchable questions and answers in its archive.

LinkedIn Answers - A great example of how to harness the power of a community, LinkedIn Answers works similar to Yahoo! Answers. Anyone from the LinkedIn network can ask a question, and anyone in the network can answer. However, since LinkedIn members aren’t anonymous John Does, but mostly professionals whose names, positions and experience you can easily see, these answers can be very valuable. Furthermore, LinkedIn members are friendly and ready to answer questions, especially intelligent ones.

Koonji - Somewhere between Clipmarks and Yahoo! Answers, Koonji lets users easily gather scraps of information from the web and create answers or streamlined how-tos for various questions. For example, if you’re interested in buying an LCD tv, a Koonji might consists of 4 steps - some general information about LCDs, a list of LCD review sites, followed by a number of links to manufacturers’ websites, and finally links to online hardware stores.

Yahoo! Answers - Yahoo!’s big success in the field where Google failed, Yahoo! Answers is as simple as it gets. Anyone can ask questions, and anyone can answers. However, if your answers are considered to be helpful, you earn more points, which in turn enables you to answer more questions. By participating in Yahoo! Answers, you are creating a strong online image which can be quite influential.

WikiHow - a collaborative project consisting of hundreds of how-tos, aiming to offer ‘clear, concise solutions to the problems of everyday life’. Answers are often in-depth, while the topics are mostly concerned with everyday-life problems. Everyone is free to contribute or browse the articles, while questions are asked in the form of topic requests.

Other resources

Answers.com - although it’s basically an online encyclopedia, Answers.com includes WikiAnswers, which enables users to ask or answer a question. Besides that, Answers is by itself a very valuable knowledge resource with topics structured as questions, which makes it a good starting point for finding information on a specific topic.

Twitter - although it’s not its primary function, Twitter can be a great tool for getting some answers quickly, especially if you have a large group of friends. People love answering questions on Twitter simply because it’s so easy.

Instructables - makes it easy to post detailed (with images) how-tos for your do-it-yourself projects. Users can explore and contribute to the site freely, and if they need some question answered they can ask it in the forums.