MyBaboon.com launched a free search service that allows customers to search for hard to find items across the Internet. Rather than searching sites daily, users can create a customized search, and MyBaboon.com will notify them when the item becomes available.

MyBaboon currently searches eBay only, but the service has plans to add additional marketplaces. When the service launched in test mode last year, it searched multiple marketplaces. But according to MyBaboon's David Whitby, "Most of these sites (other than Ebay) were having some trouble handling the spikes in traffic that our search program could cause if we were to start getting a significant number of users."

Whitby said MyBaboon now looks at whether a site offers an API and how often new items are listed on a particular site, in order to determine how often a search should be run to be able to notify users without putting unnecessary stress on that particular site.

Whitby said Overstock Auctions will probably be the next auction site to be added. "We are also considering a similar but slightly modified service that will search the large auto classifieds such as Autotrader and Cars.com," he said.

http://www.mybaboon.com