I wrote a blog post a little while ago entitled “Audi S4s are like crack”. When searching me through Lijit for that post, people sometimes just type in “crack”…which means that “crack” then shows up as one of my popular searches, and on my stats page, and (if someone just did it and you happen to be there to see it) on the Lijit homepage. Since I’m not really a big fan of crack (the drug) and haven’t amassed a lot of interesting, searchable content related to it, I sometimes find all of that a little misleading, as well as ever so slightly embarrassing.

Figuring that some of you may have experienced this same phenomenon, we added a feature that allows you to filter the searches displayed about you. Just look for the “Filter displayed searches” link on your profile page (under the “Searched About” cloud) or at the bottom of the “Top 25 Searches” list on your stats page.

Enter the terms you no longer want to display and — shazam! — they’ll display no more. If you change your mind and want to see those searches again, simply remove the term from your list and they’ll pop right back into view. Easy as that.

In honor of the first day of spring, we decided to clean house at Lijit — out with the old logo, site, and Wijit designs, in with the new. We think this has given Lijit a more open, roomy, and serene feeling, which we really like and hope you will too. We’d love to hear what you have to say about our new look, so feel free to add a comment and let us know how it strikes you.

As part of this change we’ve also made a new Wijit design available:

It’s very simple and clean — all of the same tasty Lijit search functionality without the clutter. If you’d like to swap out your old Lijit Search Wijit for the new one, just visit the Wijit page and go back through the install process.Finally, I’d like to introduce you to two new characters on the Lijit site, to whom we affectionately refer as “Crazy Head Girl” and “Serene Egghead Man”. (Yes, we know we need better names for them.) Serene Egghead Man is our new default no-picture icon, so you’ll see him wherever we have no alternate picture to display. As for Crazy Head Girl, she’s currently only found on our logged out homepage, but we hope to cleverly incorporate her into other parts of the site, and maybe even the Wijit (gasp!), in the future.

Now it’s even easier to modify your network! In last night’s update we added the ability to modify your network without leaving the blog you are on. If you are a Lijit user and you visit a blog that displays our search capability, now our Wijit adapts and lets you add the person to your network! If you’re on your own blog, you can immediately jump to your stats page, and if that person is already in your network, then it will tell you.