'Net Features : 110209

Top Search Plugins for WordPress

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:18:00 GMT

It doesn't seem that anyone really likes the default search feature that ships with WordPress. Not to worry though; once again, WP plugins to the rescue. Website Magazine has featured ten powerful, feature-driven plugins which add an entirely new level of functionality to your weblog installation.

Did we forget one? Let us know and add your comment below.

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Google Custom Search Plugin: Very popular plugin which replaces all WP search forms and points them to a Google Custom Search. Adds a new search page on a weblog, converts the default search URL to one that is more search engine friendly. All-time downloads for the plugin are over 7,000. Download URL

Search Everything: A plugin which adds some much needed functionality to the default Wordpress Search. The plugin highlights search terms, searches pages, tags, categories, and comments. All-time downloads for the plugin have topped 160,000. Download URL

Amazon Search: Allows for direct linking to items in your posts using a special tag. Set associate IDs for each international amazon server and set one server as the default. Also includes an Amazon Search widget which will produce search results with direct links to products. All-time downloads for the plugin are just over 2.300. Download URL

Better Search: Aims to improve the visitor search experience by providing contextually relevant search and list results based on relevance. Also tracks searches and allows for the presentation of a “search heatmap” of the most popular queries. All-time downloads for the plugin are over 5,000. Download URL

wpSearch: A very handle blogs search plugin based on the open source search engine Lucene. Requires PHP 5 or higher to run without conflict. All-time downloads for this plugin are just under 3,800. Download URL

Dave’s WordPress Live Search: Similar to the LiveSearch Popup, this plugin adds functionality which allows users to see results before they finish typing their query. There are some limits as it stands – only one search box per page, requires JavaScript to be enabled and the plugin won’t work on PHP 4.x. All-time downloads of the plugin are over 4,000. Download URL

Search Hilite: Highlights the term a user searched for when referred from search engines like Google, Yahoo, or Wordpress own internal search system. All-time downloads for the plugin have topped 5,000. Download URL

Enhanced Search Box: Built with jQuery, the plugin adds provides control over the default search text from the admin panel and clears the default search text when the search box is focused. All-time downloads for the plugin are under 1,000. Download URL

Zanox Product Search: Queries the zanox Web service API for sponsored programs and products based on the search query and displays them within the search result page. Configure the “sales region”, minimum and maximix price, and even how many (and which products) are displayed. All-time downloads of this plugin are just under 300. Download URL

Recent Searches Widget: Show recent search performed by other users in a sidebar widget. New searches top the list and are SEO-friendly and can have the rel=”nofollow” tag added. Available in English, Italian and Polish. All-time downloads are just over 600. Download URL

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Voting Open for .INFO Awards

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:09:00 GMT

Afilias, the registry operator for the .Info domain extension, formally opened the 2009 .INFO Awards to public voting today.

Anyone can now vote for their favorite of the top 10 .INFO Web sites until midnight on November 6, 2009. Prizes for the awards are allocated as: US$7,500 for the winner, US$5,000 for second place, and US$3,000 for third place. The winners of the .INFO Awards will be announced on November 9.

Some interesting statistics on this year's awards:

- The most popular categories for site submissions included special interest websites (28 percent), private websites (23 percent) and business/corporate websites (17 percent).

- Interest in the .INFO awards was truly global with submissions being entered from 18 countries. Germany led with 31 percent of submissions, followed by the United States at 19 percent and Russia at 12 percent. Notably, the UK accounted for 6 percent of submissions, while India and France each had 4 percent.

“The .INFO domain is the global home for anyone with information to share. The submissions for this year’s awards program reflect .INFO’s global appeal and the inherent usefulness of an Internet domain entirely devoted to information,” said Roland LaPlante, senior vice vresident and chief marketing officer for Afilias.

I was honored to be a member of the judges panel this year, along with Dominik Grollman, editor in chief of Internet World Business (Germany), Gautam Chatur, senior director at Qorvis Communications, Michael Stephanblome, managing director at AdJug UK, Katy Tafoya, Editor of ConstantChatter.com, and Philipp Grabensee, chairman of the Afilias Board of Directors.

What are you waiting for? Go ahead and vote for your favorite .INFO award now!

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Rebrand That PDF eBook at Post Affiliate Pro

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:48:00 GMT

Affiliate management platform Post Affiliate Pro released a pretty interesting new affiliate feature today dubbed Rebrand PDF which allows affiliates to automatically change affiliate links within ebooks.

While that may only appeal to a certain segment of our audience, it’s a pretty creative way to capitalize on the surge of content that’s about to hit the Web (thanks in part to e-reader devices) and should catch the attention of both advertisers and publisher/affiliates on how they might monetize PDFs in the future.

"PDF's are frequently demanded by top affiliates and until now it's been a hassle for them to be created via branding EXE's or manually requesting them from the affiliate manager, resulting in reduced affiliate sales potential," says Viktor Zeman, Co-Founder and Senior Developer of Quality Unit Ltd.

PDF Rebrand supports pdf's created by several platforms including Adobe Acrobat and Open Office. Common variables such as name and affiliate link have been augmented by support for 25 additional custom variables, making personalization by affiliates now more important than ever.

Recent Mentions of Post Affiliate Pro at Website Magazine:
- Launch an Affiliate Program with Post Affiliate Pro
- Comparison of Affiliate Software
- Solving The Software Puzzle

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Google Using RSS/Atom Feeds To Discover New URLs

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:17:00 GMT

Google announced a new feature last week that uses RSS and Atom feeds for the discovery of new webpages.

Using feeds for discovery allows Google to index new pages more quickly than traditional crawling methods. According to the announcement, Google may use “many potential sources to access updates from feeds including Reader, notifications services, or direct crawls of feeds.

If you’re publishing an RSS/Atom feed, make sure that those files are not disallowed by your robots.txt file. If you’re unsure whether your feeds are crawlable, use the robots.txt tester in Google Webmaster Tools.

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