I try not to blog about too much personal stuff here, but I have something I could use some help with.  A new search engine, Mahalo.com is having a contest to promote their new toolbar for “Mahalo Follow” and whomever can get the most people to install and use the toolbar will win a new computer.  This is where you come in.  If you use firefox and are tired of crappy search results, install the Mahlalo Follow toolbar.  You’ll be helping yourself, while also helping me possibly win a new computer to use with How I Met Your Blog.

Click more for a full write up of how it works and help installing.

What Mahlalo is trying to do is create search results for some of the internet’s most common searches, but what makes them different is the fact that real people are building the search results to make it easier to find the real information.  If you’ve done a google search for a product or service these days you quickly realize that there are a lot of results that have no relevant info.  Performing good Google searches these days is becoming more of an art, than no-brainer activity.  Mahalo gets these Google Search Artist to sift through all the junk and deliver the best results to you.

So now you know what Mahalo is, I want to tell you about a plug-in for firefox that will make things a lot easier.  Mahalo has released a plug-in called “Mahalo Follow” adding a Mahalo toolbar to your firefox window to allow easier searching, and the best part is the tie-in with google searching.  So even if you forget to search Mahalo and just search google.com, if Mahalo thinks it has better results for your search it opens a small window allowing you to compare Mahalo results with Google results.  I have found this much more useful than I would have ever thought.

Ok, so by now you are probably asking yourself why I am blogging about this.  I have two reasons.  The first being, I just realized what an awesome service this plug-in is.  And secondly Mahalo is having a contest.  I have registered and If I can get the most people to install the Mahalo Follow plug-in and perform searches with it I can win an iMac!  I’m counting on you all to follow my special link and install Follow for yourself.  Trust me, do some searches from the toolbar (those help my rank too!) and see how awesome it is.

Installation is pretty basic.  The two things to watch for, is when you first click the link you might see a little yellow bar at the top of the window saying you need to add www.mahalo.com to the list of sites allowed to install plug-ins.  Do that. You might also have to click the link again after allowing www.mahalo.com to install plug-ins.  If you have any other questions, leave a comment or shoot me an email!