Search-Powered Web Apps

Our fearless leader Todd Vernon, CEO of Lijit, was interviewed by Robert Scoble during a visit he made to our plush world wide headquarters here in Boulder Colorado. Have a view here or check it out on Building43.com!

Think about all those times you visit an unknown place. And I mean this in the analog world…e.g. a ‘real life’ place such as when as you walk into a new building and don’t know if you’re even in the right place, what floor you need to be on, etc etc. You have enough stress in your life, right?

Got the mental image? OK, hold on to it for a sec…

Now repeat that real life process I speak of above. You have your Google map printed and in hand, you generally have building location nailed. You walk in and…behold!…a concierge waiting to welcome you to the property and fundamentally telling you you’re in the right place and where to go and hopefully lots of other insightful information. Makes you feel are warm and fuzzy, right?

Ladies and gents: Welcome to the software equivalent of this example above, now available for your site:

The Lijit Welcome Wijit!

Let me give you a bit of a background on the Welcome Wijit. Frankly, it doesn’t deviate too far from the ‘real life’ example above!

Your content is extremely valuable to you and even more so to your loyal readers. Yet how many times have you done a search on a horizontal search platform like Bing, Google, Yahoo, Ask, etc and clicked on a link in the result set only to land on the page, not dive deeper into the content other than a 2 second eye scan and bail on it via back button to return to the search results and keep on searching. Admit it! What we’re attempting to do with Welcome Wijit is prevent this from easily happening to YOUR content. Fundamentally Welcome Wijit is about….

• Welcoming new readers to your site when they’ve linked in from somewhere else…e.g. a search engine, blogroll that includes your site, etc. They land on your property and they get a true ‘greeting’ to say thanks for stopping by!
• Better content discovery: Readers landing on your site for the first time will have an initial experience right off the bat of mining your content. What is old to you is all new to your new readers! Welcome Wijit will help them find it easily.
• Tools tools tools for your readers: The Welcome Wijit by design is about improved loyalty and return visits. The Wijit offers features to quickly add your feed to RSS readers, My Yahoo and iGoogle home pages to ensure they have you earmarked for return visits.
• Pre-selected search results: When a reader is searching the web for something and they stumble upon your site, Welcome Wijit knows that search term and will provide a pre-selected list of the top 3 relevant items fitting that search on your blog, within your content and throughout your network…given them a true ‘feel’ of the Lijit search experience.
• Advertising opportunities: We’re committed to doing what we can to make you more money! Similar to your Search Engine Results Page advertising, Welcome Wijit provides Google Ads to ensure more relevant ads are seen and clicked through by your readers.

So how does the Welcome Wijit Work? Let’s show ya!

Turning the Welcome Wijit On:

If you have the Lijit Search Wijit installed, Welcome Wijit is ready for use! You’ve got to turn ‘er on though first. You do this by visiting your Wijit management console and you’ll see a new tab for Welcome Wijit. By default Welcome Wijit is turned off. Simply check the ‘Show my readers the welcome wijit’ and you’re done. In addition, the Welcome Wijit management console provides you certain customization features and a preview of the wijit as you see here:

By default, the Welcome Wijit is set to appear above the post your reader is clicking in from via search engine, etc. The position of the Welcome Wijit can be set to be seen below the post, however:

How your readers interact with Welcome Wijit

You’re probably asking: “So how do my readers interact with Welcome Wijit?”. Easy! Assume that the reader has found your site through prototypical means…e.g. a search engine search, a link from someone’s blog roll, a link in an email, etc. The Welcome Wijit determines things like where your reader came from, what search terms if any were used to find your content, etc, before unveiling itself and providing the pre-selected content for your reader.

From a mechanical perspective, Welcome Wijit will invoke and appear within the content post region of your site. In cases where we can not automatically detect this, our team can work with you to ensure this fits to the place you need it to. Welcome Wijit automatically determines characteristics of your blog and assumes styling traits of your Lijit Wijit to inject itself into your site elegantly.

What are the main features of Welcome Wijit?

Let’s walk you through the UI. Note that the screen shot below is what is referred to as ‘expanded mode’, controlled by the reader to unveil more tools (and more of your content!)

1 Welcome Wijit will ensure we say hello to your reader from the place they came from. A Google search in the example above.

2 RSS Subscription feeds have been added to put them front and center. By design we want new readers to come back to your site time and again to enjoy the content your publish.

3 Your Network is key! Providing a link to traverse over to your Lijit user page so readers can see your network, popular search terms, etc is designed to help readers see your larger presence on the web.

4 Like RSS, we’ve added one-click tools to insert your site’s feed into iGoogle or My Yahoo gadgets so your readers can scope out your new prose first thing in the AM with their coffee.

5 The Lijit Search Field is front and center and designed to incentivize readers to search more of your content. It will be pre-loaded with the search term the reader was hunting for on their initial search when they found your site.

6 Pre-selected content based on the search term will be unveiled to ensure the reader will see the historical depth and richness of your content. What’s old to you is new to them! Let ‘em find it easy!

7 Thumbnail previews of the content items will help attract readers to see your content and visually parse its relevance. Plus it’s pretty cool.

8 Advertising like that on your Search engine Result Page are included on the Welcome Wijit in a slim and non-intrusive implementation. We’re about making you more money and advertising opportunities like this will help ensure this with better and more creative visibility to your readers.

So there you have it folks! The first release of the Lijit Welcome Wijit! The team is pushing to produce more tools for  you and your readers, dear publisher! Better discovery of your content, improved time on site as they see really what you have published all yield improved loyalty and more opportunities for you to make money and gain more exposure.

So go ahead and enable your Welcome Wijit! Start giving your readers that big ‘ol warm electronic hug when they enter your domain for the first time. Not unlike when your Grandma used to hug you when you visited. C’mon, you know you have a soft side….

Check out our FAQ if you want more info !

There used to be only two ways to display your search results–an overlay that popped up on top of your blog when a reader did a search or with the results hosted on our site. For those that haven’t seen it, this is what the overlay looks like…

With a recent release, however, all that has changed. We’ve had many users asking for the ability to embed search results within a specified page on their blog and now, you can do just that.

To see an example of how the embedded search results look, take a stroll over to Celebridiot. While getting your updates on celeb gossip, do a search using Lijit in the upper left of their site*. This is how you’ll see the search results…

Pretty cool, huh? The only thing with this display option is that it’s not meant for the weak of heart or the less tech-savvy. By this, I don’t mean to offend but do want to convey that in order to embed search results on your site, you need to be able to create your own page within your blog where the results will live. This is not always an easy task and there are some blog platforms that may not allow you to do this. But, if you know what you’re doing, here are the steps for embedding Lijit search results on your blog.

Start by creating a page within your blog for the search results. If you’re using WordPress, you can do this by creating a new page and calling it www.yoururl.com/search. Publish the page and once you have this set up, log in to your Lijit account.

Go to your Wijit configuration page within Lijit. When you’re logged in, choose the ‘Wijits’ tab at the top of the page. If you scroll down towards the bottom, you’ll see an area with a drop-down box to choose where you want to display your search results. Choose the ‘on my blog (embedded)’ option and you’ll see this appear.

You can enter the URL of the page you created for your search results in the empty box and then copy the code below to put on that page.

Save your widget settings at the bottom when you’re done. You’re going to paste the code we provided you on that special search results page that you set up and then, you should be good to go.

We’re excited about this functionality because it allows our users to have even more control over how their search looks and feels. And? This is something you wanted. So if you have any questions about how to embed search results on your blog, feel free to send them our way.

*This site is also a great example of our WordPress plugin overridng the default search of a site and making it way more Lijit.

Yeah, that’s kinda old news. By now, if you are a Lijit user, you have seen that we have integrated all the major comment systems (Disqus, JS-Kit and Intense Debate) as well as blog platform comments (Wordpress and Typepad) into the search results.

But, what we may not have done is explain why it’s such a important feature.

Of all the components of a blog post (the title, the body and the comments), only comments describe the engagement level of the readership of a particular post.

Think about it. The title gives you a hint as to what the content is, and the content gives you, well, the content. But its the comments where real interaction occurs.

Lijit, focusing on trust based results, wants to provide the searcher all the possible clues available as to which result is most trust-worthy as well as most relevant. It’s one of the reasons why searchers use less words in their searches to discover content.

In this result from my blog, you will see that the first result, which has the most comments is expanded to show the first few comments. I highlighted an interesting line in the comment about the importance of community interaction:

Features such as comment integration are important for us to continue to roll out as we continue to provide search results that provide real value to the blogger and the searcher.

The added benefit of comment systems, such as Disqus, is their network and how people comment on blogs both within and outside the Lijit network. Beyond the simple comment integration, we hope to continue to explore ways to use the comment data in our results.

You will see that we have added Disqus to this blog. We are excited to test it first hand and see what behaviors it drives. Over time, we will continue to use this blog as a place to test other technologies and their potential integration or partnership with Lijit.

If you are interested in us trying out specific plugins or technologies, please leave a comment.

We are super excited to announce a new update to our Wordpress Plugin. The same plugin that brought sweet search functionality and stats information to your wordpress blog is now even better.  You might not notice much, as the core of this update revolves around backend functionality. So what does that mean to you???

• Our search form override functionality is now compatible with just about any wordpress theme out there.  (if you find one that doesn’t work, let us know, and we’ll try to add it)
• The plugin enables new widget functionality which results in faster widget loading for your readers.

If you are using Wordpress 2.7 or higher, you should see auto upgrade notices for version 1.1 showing up in your admin console within the next 24 hours. You can just auto upgrade from your plugins screen. Or, you can always manually install/upgrade the plugin from the Lijit Wordpress Plugin page. For handy install tips and instructions, you can always reference our Lijit Help pages for guidance.

As always, if you have any suggestions or feedback, don’t hesitate to drop us a line at support@lijit.com.

You might remember, back in January, that we announced comment integration if you were using a third-party commenting system like Disqus, Intense Debate, or JS-Kit. Then, in early March, we looped Wordpress comments into the mix. But, if you were a blogger using Typepad, you might have felt a little left out.

No more, ye Typepad users! With last night’s release, you too can now experience the magic of having comments show up in your search results.

(Let’s take a moment to fully celebrate this…)

With that out of the way, there is one thing you have to do if you want to see those comments displayed within your search results. But it’s not hard, it’s totally worth it, and we have the utmost faith that you can do this.

You have to enable your comment feeds within your Typepad dashboard, which is easily done by following the four steps outlined above. After logging in to your Typepad account:

Step #1–> Click on the ‘Weblogs’ tab along the top.

Step #2–> Choose the ‘Configure’ tab.

Step #3–> From there, go to ‘Feeds’.

Step #4–> And finally, check the box to enable comment feeds on indivual posts and pages.

When you’re done with that, be sure to save your changes at the bottom of the page, sit back and enjoy the enhanced functionality of Lijit that we keep striving to bring you! If you have questions or need help with doing this, please leave us a comment and we’re happy to help.

Yesterday, we released the ability for people to have more than one account under a single profile. Yet, we decided that just wasn’t good enough. “No,” we said, “there must be more!”

We huddled together (we often huddle) and thought about options.

Many of the options were just untenable. We thought about having all of our search results in Comic Sans.

Quickly, we realized that wasn’t a great idea.

After a little while, it dawned on us.

“We should integrate Wordpress comments!” (After all, “wordpress” is our #1 search result internally, and we have a kick-ass wordpress plugin.)

A cry rose from our huddle…

(I think one of the developers might have actually cried, but I am certainly not one to to mention any names)

…and away we went. Now along with our integrations of Disqus, JS-Kit, Intense Debate, if you are using the default Wordpress comments, you will find a nice link in the lower left that will expose a few of the comments on the post, and a link to view more comments.

With the inclusion of Wordpress comments (even Wordpress.com comments, which is ironic since *cough* Automattic wont allow us to be installed on their Wordpress.com platform *cough*) our publishers can see the direction we are going with our feature set.

Our mission is to expose the expertise and influence of our publishers to their audience by surfacing more of the blogger’s content to their readers. It is clear that OnceUponAWin.com has great 80’s nostalgia content, and a passionate user base making them experts on, well, Shrinky Dinks.

As a user, there is nothing you need to do to have your Wordpress comments surfaced. They will automagically appear within results as of today on bloggers who are using our backend search.

More integrated content; more understanding of bloggers by their audience; more surfaced expertise and influence.

Seems like a win for everyone.

With last night’s release, we’re making it easier than ever to manage more than one Lijit account. (Because doesn’t everyone have more than one blog these days?)  Having just one sign-in for many Lijit widgets is a feature that our users have been asking about for a long time and NOW…we’ve made the dream come alive.

When you log in to your Lijit account, you’ll now see an arrow next to your name along the top of your profile page. When you click on that arrow, you’ll see a drop-down that asks if you want to create another widget. Clicking on that will take you to the account creation sign-up flow, which looks like this…

With this enhanced functionality, you can now sign-in with only one username and have access to the stats across all your blogs. BUT (and it’s a big one) this new feature does not change how our search widget works. What that means is that you still need a different account for each of your blogs, but now, you only have to sign in once in order to maintain all of them.

If you already have a couple of different accounts within Lijit, there is no automatic import process to bring all of your accounts together. But if you choose to set up different profiles under the same account, let us know and we’ll be happy to help delete old accounts or walk you through the process. Send us your feedback. As usual, we’re here working for you.

After our release last night, we’re proud to introduce a super-cool integration that allows you to see blog comments in your search results. If you’re using JS-Kit, Intense Debate, or Disqus, you’ll now see something different when doing a Lijit search.

For example, if you do a search on Guy Kawasaki’s blog for Twitter, this is what you’ll get…

Underneath the search result, you’ll see how many comments the post received and when you click on the link, you’ll get a preview of the first couple of comments. There is also a “View more comments” link that will show you all the comments on the post.

Why is comment integration important?

–People that write and read blogs are always interested in what others have to say.  One of the most valuable pieces of any blog is the comments section because it’s an excellent indicator of reader engagement and shows the conversation taking place around a topic. Lijit understands that and with this integration, give you the ability to judge a search result by checking out the comments before you click on the result.

–The integration of comments into search results is an important step forward in the integration of widgets and the content that BOTH publishers and readers find valuable. Lijit is proud to offer a unique search experience that is not available anywhere else.

–Lijit was founded on the notion of trust.  We recognize the critical importance of your social network in establishing and conveying trust.  This is yet another example of how Lijit uncovers more valuable information for publishers, readers and commenters alike.

We are proud of this new feature and want to know what you think. Leave us a comment with your feedback and enjoy the enhanced search functionality!

I’m Dave Ferro, the Director of Ad Serving here at Lijit Networks, and today’s guest author for the Lijit blog. Today, Lijit is releasing the latest version of its ad network. The theme of this release is to offer greater value and control for our publishers. In our first release, we provided publishers with the ability to opt-in to our ad network and earn money from the largely overlooked ad inventory of search results pages. It was a solid first step in our product evolution, and now we are taking a second step toward our goal of providing publishers with a transparent, flexible, and manageable search ad offering.

Publishers can now set their own pricing for search ads that advertisers target for their search results pages. Publishers who choose to do so can also sell their own search ad inventory through a link that they can email to advertisers. Because many publishers will prefer the leave the business of selling ad space to us, we will fill all available inventories with ads that we sell directly to advertisers. As always, we will fill the remaining unsold inventory with ads from third party networks like Google AdSense and Yahoo!.

We have also placed a link in the search results pages of our publishers that will bring an advertiser to the ad creation workflow. For publishers who have opted-in, the links will bring the advertiser to a workflow specifically for their publications. If a publisher has yet to opt-in to the Lijit ad network, the advertiser will be taken to the generic campaign workflow.

We are also making it easier for advertisers to target their ads to match the intent stream of the reader. Advertisers now have the ability to search for individual publishers who have opted into the ad network, and to review statistics and pricing information before creating a campaign for a specific publisher’s search results pages. For those advertisers who target individual publishers, they will pay the price set by the publisher. Advertisers also now have the ability to upload lists of keywords and keyword phrases to target their campaigns.

In the coming weeks and months, we will release features and offerings to improve our ad network for both publishers and advertisers. Continuing to add value for our publisher and advertiser partners by providing flexibility, transparency, and control are the fundamental principles behind our decision tree. I look forward to future guest posts where I can announce what we will have rolled out in our next releases.

You can find out more details on our Advertising Network page.