Lijit Search — Get a Great Search Tool and Make Money, Too

Inte­grat­ing an effec­tive search tool into my new blog turned out to be much sim­pler than I expected. It is a good way to “hit at least THREE birds with one stone”, so to speak.

This tool can provide:

1. A way to gen­er­ate pas­sive income by shar­ing in adver­tis­ing rev­enue
2. A great search tool that is very fast and effec­tive
3. Site sta­tis­tics about how read­ers are search­ing for con­tent on your site

I noticed that Copyblogger.com was using a search tool called “Lijit” (avail­able at www.lijit.com).  I tried out Copyblogger’s Lijit-based search tool and was impressed with the results and the look/feel of how it worked.

I decided to try it out.  Here are the sim­ple steps to set­ting it up on your site:

• point your browser to www.lijit.com/signup/start
• enter the URL to your blog and click the “Get Lijit!” button
• after a few moments, the Lijit site prompts you to sign up for an account
• Once signed up, you can then con­fig­ure your site to use Lijit
• I am using Word­press, so what I did is add the Lijit plu­gin and then put in on my right side­bar.  Here’s how:
  • click on the Plu­g­ins menu (while you are logged into your Word­press blog)
  • click on “Add New” to add a new plugin
  • enter “lijit” in the search box
  • click on the “install” link to install the “Lijit Search” widget
  • click on Appearance/Widgets
  • drag the “Lijit Search” wid­get to one of your sidebars
  • you should now see your new search box appear in your cho­sen sidebar
• Con­fig­ur­ing how your search wid­get looks in Word­press is very straightforward:
  • Click on Settings/Lijit
  • There you will see options to change the search type
  • Click on the “Lijit Pro­file” link to see more options
  • You will now see your pro­file page on lijit.com
  • Click on “Wijits”
  • The wijits page gives you con­trol over how your search wid­get looks.  Try it out, it is very intu­itive to use and you can imme­di­ately see how your choices effect the way the search box will appear.
  • Once your search looks the way you want, you can click “Save Wijit Set­tings” and you should imme­di­ately see the changes on your site

Here are the fea­tures I liked about Lijit and you prob­a­bly will, too!

Fea­tures:

• Search over­lay (it appears like a popup, but much bet­ter than the old unde­sir­able pop­ups!) that keeps cus­tomers on your site.  Try it – you will like it!
• Search your other con­tent.  When read­ers search your site, they will see addi­tional tabs that show matches in other con­tent you may have.  You can set Lijit up to search a vari­ety of your sites: Social Net­work (such as LinkedIn, Twit­ter, and My Space), Pho­tos and Videos (such as flikr, You Tube, and Vimeo) and Book­mark­ing (such as digg, Deli­cious, and Stum­ble Upon).   I have not yet exper­i­mented with it, but it looks like a very pow­er­ful tool for a blog to have.
• Thumb­nails of pho­tos and videos can be con­fig­ured to dis­play in search results
• You have the option to share in the rev­enue from text ads.  Lijit earns money through the ads that dis­play on your search results page.  They give you the option to share in some of that rev­enue.  Check out set­ting up an “Ad Wijit” under the Wijits tab in your lijit.com options screens.
• In the Lijit’s “Stats” tab, you can see a vari­ety of inter­est­ing sta­tis­tics about how peo­ple are arriv­ing at your site and what they are search­ing on.

I have been very impressed so far with the Lijit tool.  Try it out for your­self, I think you will as pleased with the way it works!

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