askLaila introduces Chat bots for IM clients – Yahoo Messenger and GTalk

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askLaila has been on a distribution spree for last few months – for instance their Airtel partnership enabled them to be present on SMS search, DTH as well as Airtel Live and they almost ‘hijacked’ MSN Cities portal etc.

And today, the Bangalore based startup has launched chat bots for Yahoo messenger and GTalk (we did urge local search players to launched their chat bots)

Quick Instructions:

For Yahoo Messenger, add asklaila@yahoo.com and for Gtalk/Gmail , add asklaila@bot.im to your friend list.

Once you add the respective ids, you can set your city (“select <city>”) and fire your search query using query, location format (more @ askLaila blog).

Apart form local businesses, the search also integrates movies and events data.

Overall. this is a seamless integration and search results include necessary details like address/phone number and link to the business profile page.

You can also fire complex queries like chinese restaurant, bangalore, valet parking and you will get convincing results.

Do give chat bot a spin and share your comment/feedback.

Interestingly, both these IM companies (i.e. Yahoo and Google) have their own local search products, but aren’t integrated with their own IM clients, which I believe is the most logical thing to do (it’s just a hack, after all).

Aside, askLaila team asks you to use gentle language while talking to Laila.