Even though its traffic is down, Hunch says new user registrations have risen dramatically recently. And as more users register, Hunch says its recommendation engine keeps getting smarter.

Barely more than two months ago, Hunch began requiring visitors to register/login to use the site. In doing so, all Hunch visitors were required to answer the site’s “Teach Hunch About You” (THAY) questions — the information that Hunch relies on to make more accurate recommendations. To date, Hunch says its users have answered more than 50 million THAY questions. At the time of that June announcement, Hunch said that users with profiles typically get 20% to 40% better results.

In today’s blog post, Hunch shares some of the results of that change:

Since we changed Hunch to login only, our overall site traffic has dropped but the number of users registering daily has tripled to about 3,000 per day, growing aggregate accounts by about 15% every month. The accuracy of recommendations has gotten a lot better since Hunch is much smarter when users have an account.

Hunch also says it will soon announce “a number of partnership deals” that will involve Hunch being used to personalize other web sites.

Related Topics: Search Engines: Answer Search Engines | Search Engines: Help Engines | Search Engines: Hunch

About The Author: Matt McGee is Search Engine Land's Executive News Editor, responsible for overseeing our daily news coverage. His news career includes time spent in TV, radio, and print journalism. His web career continues to include a small number of SEO and social media consulting clients, as well as regular speaking engagements at marketing events around the U.S. He blogs at Small Business Search Marketing and can be found on Twitter at @MattMcGee and/or on Google Plus. See more articles by Matt McGee