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hakia is jumping on the personalized search page bandwagon with My hakia. Users can customize several dynamic content features including:

• News search
• News headlines
• PubMed search
• Wikipedia
• YouTube videos
• Cartoons

Here’s a screenshot:

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Earlier this year, Yahoo acquired the Inquisitor plugin, which is a search suggestion plugin for Safari. A few months later they updated it, but it still remained for the Safari browser.

Now, the plugin is available for Firefox and Internet Explorer browsers.

Included with the release are algorithm enhancements, and IE users will get a bookmark-based retrieval feature.

Writing on the Yahoo Search blog, Ariel Seidman says “Beyond these enhancements, the focus of Inquisitor, regardless of browser platforms, remains squarely on providing you with instant web results that get you to your destination faster, the best query formulation assistance and a richer, more personalized search experience. Now you don’t have to decide between your favorite browser and your favorite search experience - you can have both.”

A whopping 94% of moms rely on other moms during a purchasing decision. So, it comes as no surprise to learn that mom bloggers can have a powerful impact on your online marketing campaign.

Here’s some data from Mom Central Consulting to help let this idea sink in deep into your marketing grey matter:

• 96% of Moms value recommendations they find on Mom Blogs
• Over 78% of Mom Bloggers now review products and services
• More than 60% of Mom Bloggers consider making money important and want more connectivity with companies
• 37% of Mom Bloggers have been contacted as resources for the press

Woah! Did you see that last number? Kind of small considering how powerful moms are. There’s clearly an opportunity for you to go in there and snag some good mom blog coverage.

Need tips on how to approach bloggers? (Hint: It’s not like pitching a journalist)

• Send them a friendly, personalized email. Do not mass email.
• Ask permission to send them a sample of your product or free trial of your service. Do not send unsolicited!
• Offer them something to give away to their readers
• Be accessible to answer questions
• Be cordial even when you get a bad review. It’s ok to comment and defend your product (politely!). But it’s even better to take their criticism to heart and make your product or service better.

What are your tips for approaching mom bloggers? Any success stories? Share your success in the comments!

Related Reading:
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MySpace has launched a new self-service ad platform. Dubbed “MySpace MyAds,” the new platform allows anyone to create banner ads and use the social network’s HyperTargeting technology to find target audiences.

MySpace offered up the following steps for advertisers to get started:

• STEP 1: Visit https://advertise.myspace.com or click the “Advertise” link located at the bottom of any MySpace page
• STEP 2: Create a display ad using the MySpace MyAds Builder Tool
• STEP 3: Select a variable ad spend anywhere from $25 to $10,000
• STEP 4: HyperTarget to customers
• STEP 5: Measure ad performance with MySpace MyAds analytics reporting

“With MySpace MyAds, we’re blowing the lid off display advertising solutions for small and medium businesses,” said Jeff Berman, President of Sales and Marketing for MySpace. “MySpace MyAds is a direct marketer’s dream – providing entrepreneurs with the most accessible, personalized, and targeted advertising toolkit in the market. We’re giving businesses better ROI ASAP and in today’s economy, that’s a must-have.”

What do you think about the new platform? Leave a comment and let us know!

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Digital advertising company MIVA has released an update of their toolbar, enabling customizable features. MIVA is also launching a customizable homepage and a widget site, ALOT Buttons, for their customers.

The ALOT brand launched in the last quarter of 2007 with the theme “Make the Internet Easy.” ALOT products aggregate proprietary content and third party content across vertically themed toolbars and homepages.

“We believe that growth of the ALOT brand to date is due largely to our vertical product strategy and believe that today’s launch is a natural progression that will enable us to further build on this success,” commented Peter Corrao, President and Chief Executive Officer, MIVA. “With our new personalized products, users can continue to install vertical toolbars and homepages optimized for their specific interests, but can now also personalize their products by adding widgets from our expanding widget library.”

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Real estate search engine Trulia today announced three new features to assist home buyers, sellers and agents. Personalized news feeds, mobile applications, and a blogging platform are now available to those in the home buying and selling process.

The personalized news feed can be found on Trulia’s homepage and includes new property listings, home prices changes, upcoming open houses, median sales price trends, recently sold properties, relevant blogs and Q&As from our Trulia Voices Community.

New mobile apps are available for iPhone and iPod touch users as well as owners BlackBerry, Blackjack, Sony Ericsson, Nokia and many more mobile phones.

The iPhone/iPod touch app can search via price, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, square footage, color photos and local open house information. The app can detect location for the 3G phones based on the location-aware technology, or other users can simply input their location.

For other mobile phone users, you can use an interactive mobile map. Search options include property details, color photos and updated open house dates and times.

Trulia has also partnered with Dash Navigation to provide real estate search via their GPS device, Dash Express. The device is Internet-connected, providing users with real time search results.

Last but not least, the new blogging platform enables agents as well as home buyers and sellers to communicate about the real estate process. From home renovations to open houses, users can blog to their hearts desire, with the opportunity to reach Trulia’s 5 million users right off the bat.

What do you think about Trulia’s new features? Let us know in the comments.

Related Reading:
Real Estate Search Engine Trulia Adds New Depth, Features
Trulia Distributing Its Maps To Local Realtors
The Impact of User Registration on Generating Real Estate Leads
Women More Likely Than Men to Begin Real Estate Search Online

Human intelligence-based search company ChaCha has announced ChaCha 1:1, a mobile answers service designed for corporate mobile marketing campaigns. The service allows companies to utilize ChaCha’s SMS search product to initiate conversations with consumers.

“Through our sophisticated technology and human intelligence, we’re enabling anyone to harness the power of our mobile answers service,” said ChaCha co-founder and CEO, Scott A. Jones. “Now, ChaCha 1:1 Mobile Marketing Solutions ushers in the era of truly personalized mobile marketing which empowers companies to engage their target audience much more effectively.”

One of the first companies to utilize the service is Coca-Cola. The company kicked of their campaign at a NASCAR event, the Allstate Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on July 27, 2008. Coca-Cola saw a 5.2% click-through rate, much higher than the industry average of 1-2 percent.

“You need the right partner to truly make mobile marketing work for your brand. Coca-Cola is excited to work with ChaCha and see its interactive mobile marketing service effectively reach consumers in a more personal and engaging way,” said Meghan Berigan, operational marketing manager at Coca-Cola. “We are excited about this collaboration and the opportunity to work with a market innovator such as ChaCha.”

Earlier this year, ChaCha launched SMS based search at the Sundance Film Festival. ChaCha also said they’re surpassing Google SMS as the fastest growing mobile search application.

Google is helping its users understand what’s behind customized, or personalized, results (as opposed to Google Custom Search). They’re rolling out a new feature that explains why results may be tailored to a particular user.

The feature will be rolled out over the next few days. When it does, you’ll notice a new link for “More Details” in the top right corner. Clicking on the link will take you to an explanation of customized results. The explanation says that location (IP address), recent searches and web history to serve up the personalization.

Google noted that this feature does not change how they compile results.

In the latest installment from Google about search quality, the topic du jour is user intent. Google Fellow Amit Singhal is at the helm of the Official Google blog again and wrote about efforts Google makes to help searchers find what they’re looking for.

Singhal writes, “Search in the last decade has moved from give me what I said to give me what I want.” I guess that depends on who you ask. Perhaps the search engines have approached it this way, but users have always been in the give me what I want column. Either way, today it’s all about what searchers want.

Using the example of kofee annan, Singhal says Google knows a searcher is really looking for Kofi Annan, and will prompt the searcher as such. However, in a query for kofee beans, Google knows that the searcher is looking for coffee beans. Basically, Google isn’t a spelling-monger.

Singhal also says that Google knows when Dr means doctor and when it means drive, and that searching for new york times square church is a search for an actual church and not something in the New York Times.

Understanding user intent is also something that drives Google’s initiatives in both personalized and universal search.

Finally, Singhal introduces Cross Language Information Retrieval (CLIR). The technology allows searchers to discover information in a language other than the one they’re searching in and use Google’s translation technology to access it.

What do you think about Google’s understanding of user intent? Leave a comment and let us know!