Secrets to finding the right car.

Buying the right car for the right price is as scary as finding an address without a GPS. You need loads of knowledge, and if you’re like me, a Bridget Jones stuck in a Tokyo Drift storyline, yolink is the best route out of ignorance. Plus lots of that 2nd opinion, never hurts.

I ventured into searching online for cars, a little after I got to San Jose. And instantly there were way too many distractions – that hot Red Mini Cooper, the swaggering Mustang, the cute BMW or the fast-n-furious Mazda. I was hooked.

My car experts thought I needed to check my cost blind spot. So I did. When you yolink and get a look at the cost estimate for maintenance of those pretty things, you’ll literally hit the brakes and take a u-turn. So, now I got a whole NEW list of cars that are low maintenance, yet sauvé, durable and ready for a mean little driver.Honda, Toyota, Corollas suddenly kicked butt. But here are the questions I asked myself when it came down to the dirt road.

The Big Q: Did I want to lease it or buy it?
More tips

• Manual or automatic transmission?
• Do you really need four-wheel drive? Or all-wheel drive?
• What safety features do you want?
• Two-door or four-door?
• Do you have a bad back and need flexible seating positions?
• Will the car easily fit in your garage or parking space? Will it fit 5 people?

Done answering. Now search was flat, straight road again, or so I thought. Craigslist.com and Cars.com were recommended sites. So I get there, include the details - what kind of car, which year, which make. And hit search. Whooops! Didn’t see 20 pages of cars coming straight at me. So here is the secret ‘N’ (Nitrous) code to rev up search. I included my wish list – power locks, four-door, civic and black (a little indulgence never hurt). Then hit yolink.

Amazing ‘find’ acceleration and I zoomed past results to narrow down to 32 cars in 40 mins from 20 pages.Do the math. Thirty-two cars that fit exactly what I wanted.

Now for that very important 2nd opinion. So instead of the CCP(cut,copy,paste) to dump information onto a word document, I one-clicked it and saved the data on google docs. Then sent it directly to my friends for their expert opinion. Let’s see what they approve. Then we start to test-drive.

Until later, don’t forget those seat belts.
And keep yolink-ing. And if you guys have any recommendations for a good car, leave a comment.

Cheers!
Renee

How did i get here O'search engine?

I recently came across a very interesting article in MediaPost by Laurie Sullivan titled – “Did you mean this when you searched for that?” Yes. I have searched for this and ended up with that/them/there and everything else under the sun.

And I realized that searching like realty is all about ‘location, location, location’. If the results are located in the top two search pages, the chances are that everyone will open every little result. But that was before yolink.

Let me explain. Like so many of my predecessors who relocated from East Coast to the West Coast, I stepped out of SJO expecting loads of sunshine, mad traffic and little time searching for that Home Sweet Home. The only thing that I scored on was ‘little time searching’ and ‘traffic.’

Yes, ‘little time searching’ actually scored over sunshine. Because I yolink’d it. Like most movers, I searched apartments.com, craigslist.com, roommates.com etc. And was simply bombarded with gazillions of townhouses, apartments, condos, houses, haunted houses and even a trailer. So I took cover with yolink.

Using the terms ‘pool, gated parking, café, safe, Santana row’, I did a yolink search. Instantly the craigslist results dropped from 45 to 12. The ones I liked based on previews that yolink offered, I proceeded save them online. I created a google doc called ‘SJ apartment’ and sent it to my WC friends to get their opinion on the locations. I got some great advice and within 5 days I had seen and signed the dotted line. Peace ensued in the search zone.

Can you think of a metaphor for yolink? I’d liken yolink to a GPS for search. You can enter your key-terms and it’ll show you where those results are, giving details such as area (content) and proximity, in which the keywords appear. So instead of driving around, you can get to the right place at the right time. For me it was home.
Talking about GPS reminds me I got to start yolink-ing for a car. Until next time, seek and yolink shall find. No more searching for this and ending up with that. (www.yolink.com)

Bonus: Tips on moving to san jose:
Best areas: Cupertino, Santana Row, Mountain View, Castro Street (food), Willow Glen, Sunnyvale, Las Gatos.
Avoid: SJ North, parts of Campbell, Milipitas. Burbank.

Moving from East Coast to West Coast

Boxes. Loads of them. Online search. Loads of it too. Coz when a girl moves timezones, its not a joyride. My work though, is less Carpel Tunnel Syndrome and more smiling. Why? I’m putting yolink to use for any heavy lifting searching regarding housing, new car and more.

Yolink, the add-on browser search tool - makes search easy on any search engine – google.com, Craigslist.com, hotels.com etc. To quote a fellow equally enamored, it was like “Google and Cntrl+F had a baby”. Let me explain.With a FREE download from yolink.com, I can zoom past gazillion search results. After the usual google results show up, I hit the yolink 'Find' button. It scans and brings back previews of only those results that contain my keywords. And the yolink side displays detailed content based results, for a more informed decision, decreasing search time by 50%.

Like right now, I included more key terms like: ‘porch, view, pool and parking’ into the yolink toolbar for craigslist, San Jose housing results. ‘Enter.’ There, I just narrowed down my search from 42 to 9 results. Hallelujah.

For any remaining yolink atheists, I’ll double-dip into the facts. I have included a video on how it works. Kapish? Feel free to leave comments. ( http://www.yolink.com/yolink/) Currently, I use yolink on these particular tasks.

1) Single bedroom apartment/ studio -not too pricey, good location and safe.
2) New car...scratch that…second-hand car. Insurance. OMG.
3) Lastly, find east-coasters in WC that still support the Red Sox and the Patriots.

In short my Christmas needed one super-efficient Santa. So, I left a free download option for Santa too, along with the milk and cookies this year. Will keep you posted on how the search is going. But need all the help me I can get to pick the right home.

Until later, seek and yolink shall find.

Cheers!
Renee
http://www.yolink.com