As I searched for things to write about today, I realized that my search should end with search. Here are few search-related news items that recently caught my eye.

Monday Kanoodle launched its sponsored links product built for local targeting on content pages. Called LocalTarget, it aims to help advertisers reach customers in a specific market and drive additional customers to local brick and mortar outlets or increase advertisers brand presence in a particular geographic area.

Here’s how it works: advertisers looking to target the Seattle market select the LocalTarget topic of “Seattle.” These listings are then mapped to the content pages of a local media property that targets the Seattle market. Advertisers will be able to bid, buy, report and optimize their LocalTarget listings separately from their other sponsored links campaigns.

There’s a lot of talk about RSS and here’s an example of how it fits into the search world. Kanoodle last week unveiled a self-service integrated RSS feed delivery and monetization service.

BrightAds RSS is a service that is part of the Kanoodle BrightAd automated network for publishers. Through BrightAds RSS, Kanoodle’s sponsored links will are inserted directly into publishers’ RSS feeds within posts or as individual posts. Publishers’ feeds will be hosted and distributed through Moreover Technologies, which developed BrightAds RSS in conjunction with Kanoodle. Moreover also launched its FeedDirect RSS Ads service.

Also, last week, Crystal Semantics, a provider of contextual search solutions, received a patent for its Sense Engine technology. The patent (No. 6,847,972), granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, allows the correct senses of words to be determined by using a linguistics-based sense engine that determines the sense of a word.

For example, searching for the word ‘depression’ in relation to economics as apposed to the context of mental health. That means the words and senses of a dictionary are being associated with the knowledge categories of an encyclopedia.

A new search tool is trying to make it easier for users to find what you are looking for faster and get better results. Search Word Pro automates search techniques and tactics to help users build better searches.

The program’s launch page opens with 25 to 50 selected search engine options. The Search Word Pro website has more than 90 topic-specific search builders, organized into a dozen popular categories. The program allows users to select from over 250 search engines, and it uses a vocabulary of over 12,000 words.

Queries are sent to an organized list of commercial search engines, specialized Web resources, government agency search engines and databases, blog search engines, magazines, news services and news search engines. Searches can be saved (up to 20), shared via email and improved from automatic feedback. For marketers, it will enable them to tell their customers the right search words, rather than let them rely on imagination and random luck.

And finally, Sortprice.com announced that PetSmart, GameStop and Zappos.com have joined its shopping search engine. The company is also working to ensure a hassle-free shopping experience for customers by providing its merchants with a Sortprice Certified Merchant logo. In addition, Sortprice’s content is now available in RSS feed format.

I’m still searching for answers to the big questions of life, but you can enlighten me about new trends in search technology by adding your comments or blogging. Go for it.