Search for the hula hoop blogs! (Thing 3)

I started my blog search with Technorati. I chose the topic “hula hoop” because I make and sell hula hoops. I was disappointed at first because I got a lot of Wii fitness results, but as I looked closer, I found a couple of interesting blog links, and I found a section on hula hoop videos. As a hula hoop professional, I was familiar with a lot of the websites Technorati retrieved, but these were high quality sites that I know give reliable information. Kudos to Technorati. I see how relevant those results would be to someone new to hooping. If I hadn’t known of those sites before, I would have clicked them first and discovered a whole network of hula hoopers.

I tried for Opinmind and Sphere next, but neither had search functions. They were aimed at tools for bloggers to improve reaching their target audiences and maximizing hits and sales. Disappointing.

Google blog search was kind of disjointed, but I learned that Michelle Obama likes to hula hoop-- a fun fact. Again I got a lot of results for sites I already knew.
I gave Advanced Google blog search a half-hearted try and excluded the term “Wii.” I got some pretty odd results from casual bloggers who were just mentioning in passing that they liked adult sized hula hooping. As I read their testimonials, I found I liked those results because they added a cute human dynamic instead of hula hoop advertising gimmickry.