Topicle, a new search engine community created by former Google product manager Stephen Mueller, went live today.

The service works much like Wikipedia with users or the “Topicle community” creating and contributing to their own vertical search engines, forming a database of hand-picked and user-rated web sites.

“We want to generate more precise and useful search results with sources recommended by humans than solely with computer-generated algorithms,” explains Mueller on his web site.

The Topicle search process is fairly simple: You first browse for a search engine among URLs created by users in the database; for example, if you are a foodie and search for “recipes,” Topicle will generate a list of relevant URLs that you could update by adding your own favorite recipe sites.

Now if you are into unusual raw food, Topicle being in its infancy might not have much to offer yet, and it will be up to you to create your own search engine and add your favorite URLS, allowing other raw food aficionados to contribute by adding URLs or ratings.

The company hopes that with everyone's help, Topicle search engines will get better and better over time. It is still unclear how the company will manage spam URL submissions or deal with link quality; these are a few things Topicle will have to consider in the race to lead this niche market, currently dominated by Mahalo.