BlogHer - ask - Comments

All I Want for Christmas is a Seat Belt Bag a Seat Belt Bag...

Jody DeVere -- Ask Patty — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 01:19:54 -0600

I actually have two beautiful seat belt bags both were gifts, one in black and one in cream, BUT I REALLY want for Christmas this year is a multi-colored one like this http://www.seatbeltbags.com/treecycle.html to go with everything! LOL

Hope Santa reads BlogHer wish lists....

Jody DeVere
President
www.askpatty.com
www.carblabber.com

Love the list!

RenaissanceTrophyWife — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 14:35:01 -0600

I remember the good old days where we'd have oil change and detailing parties in a friend's garage... sigh.

Love those seatbelt bags, too! of course, my ultimate car-related present would be one of the new Audi S5s... yum.

RTW

http://renaissancetrophywife.wordpress.com

I also like pink because its pretty & 4 Breast Cancer Awareness

suzannecampbell — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 10:35:40 -0500

Chevrolet Covette is brand name dominated by "older" gentlemen.

I wanted to change that stereotype.

I purchased a convertable Corvette and put a Pink Breast Cancer Awareness plate (as we all know its a great cause) and put my name on it to show that woman can also drive Corvettes! And I wear a pink corvette hat!

My personal blog

Virginia DeBolt — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 09:25:04 -0500

tests (at Web Teacher) with Lijit haven't been what I wanted, either. But I've found it useful on BlogHer.

To Lijit's credit, when I wrote them about the results I was seeing, they made an effort to improve it. So far, things are no better, but I like the fact that they are responsive to my concerns.

Virginia DeBolt
BlogHer Technology Contributing Editor
Web Teacher
First 50 Words

Re: FreeFind

bobafifi — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 08:32:42 -0500

In addition to spidering your site on a daily basis, the site map and statistical reporting I've found very helpful too. Also, the FreeFind search is in many ways a backup of my sites and over the years, has 'been there' to keep things going during down times with my host.

I have not been impressed with Lijit

Kalyn Denny — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 08:03:05 -0500

Just as one small example, I wrote a series of posts about Cooking with Fresh Herbs, same title every post, followed by the name of the herb. Yet when I search for them using Lijit, only nine of the twelve posts come up. I've also had the same lack of results searching for other topics I've written about on BlogHer.com.

I do see how the ability to search the BlogHer Network is a nice feature though, so maybe that's enough of a benefit to make it worth it.

Kalyn Denny
Kalyn's Kitchen

FreeFind

Virginia DeBolt — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 07:15:06 -0500

I've used FreeFind myself with good success for a number of years. They index your site as often as you want and report to you as often as you want.

Virginia DeBolt
BlogHer Technology Contributing Editor
Web Teacher
First 50 Words

I've been using cuil.com

kazari — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 00:14:42 -0500

Mostly because I love the interface.

Re: Can you be won away from Google search?

bobafifi — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 23:31:23 -0500

I use Google for most of my searches on the web. For my own sites, I've been using http://www.FreeFind.com for eight years now! It's great. I think Google's Custom Search Site is excellent provided your site doesn't update very often. However, or those sites that do update often, (like mine), then Google's CSE is not a good match.

For database driven sites that use MySQL, the search is first rate and certainly has the *potential* to satisfy most queries. Unfortunately, I've found that wanting your MySQL searches to be as good as the results provided by a professional search company (like FreeFind), can be quite an education and for many, simply not worth the effort. I hadn't heard of Lijit before, thanks Virginia.

-Bob

Great points!

micah — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 22:06:11 -0500

Alanna, those are great points about Google Custom Search Engine. Just two points that you might not know about Lijit (where I work), one is that with CSE you have to manual manage the list of sites that are included (in essence, its a subset of Google's index), and therefore all the content must meet Google's anti-spam criteria. Lijit on the other hand, automatically includes your Blogroll, and social content (which CSE does not), and assumes that all content is trusted (since its yours).

That does often create two different sets of results, and we are working very hard to make our results as relevant as possible.

In addition, if you want, you can have Lijit use Google CSE as its index of choice so that you kinda get the best of both worlds!

Would love to hear any suggestions you might have - micah@lijit.com.

Thanks you.

Looks like

Virginia DeBolt — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 17:01:37 -0500

it's Google for you.

Virginia DeBolt
BlogHer Technology Contributing Editor
Web Teacher
First 50 Words

Google also offers a Custom Search Engine --

Alanna Kellogg — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:55:29 -0500

-- which searches only select sites, not the entire web. It's good for communities who want to establish their own search groups, and is what we use for Food Blog Search and what I use for the search engine on my own sites. It's imperfect, I think, for that purpose (though better than Lijit whose algorithms are unclear and offer up such different results than Google that at least to my mind, it's flawed) since it ranks only by authority and offers no other sort criteria. (In contrast, Google blog search allows sorting results by authority or by date.)

FWIW, I figured out last week that nearly all my AdSense revenue comes from the search pages so will be pulling the actual ads from my sites any day now.

Alanna Kellogg
Kitchen Parade &
A Veggie Venture

Hmmm,

Virginia DeBolt — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:03:25 -0500

Looks like Microsoft Word scruff. We'll just pretend it isn't there. :)

Virginia DeBolt
BlogHer Technology Contributing Editor
Web Teacher
First 50 Words

?

repliderium.com — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 13:26:54 -0500

Sorry- have no idea what the scoop with that reply was.....?

Google

repliderium.com — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 13:26:10 -0500

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I agree- the specialized sites are great for those who need
them but I think the general masses will always "google it". The fact
that this word is part of our language stands to that.