Searchles Discovery Platform FAQ

Related Content Widget Questions

                                                                                                                                   

** What is it?

When someone is reading an article on your blog, this widget shows them other articles from YOUR site that are related by topic. You can see an example of this on our own blog: The Searchles Blog

** What does it do for your site?

It is designed to keep readers on your site (does NOT drive any traffic to Searchles or off-site) and increase site-stickiness, to increase your page views via related articles within your site's content and to let you make money through our 50/50 split revenue-share from in-widget ads.

** What is the technology behind this widget?

Search technology behind this widget goes beyond basic tag-matching and text search - no need to even tag your posts. We do the work for you and determine relevancy by spidering your site's content - analyzing relationships between extracted concepts in order to retrieve the most comprehensive set of relevant posts in your site's archive.

** How do I sign up?

You only need your email address to sign up. You will then need to choose a client name and password and to input your site URL (please make sure this matches your blog url!). If you are already a Searchles user, you will need to create this separate account in order to use our widgets - though you can still choose the same user name as your regular Searchles account as this is a separate database.

** What blog hosting services support this widget?

Blogger, the Wordpress Plug-in will be available shortly, and any other site where you can relegate the widget to unique content pages and provide permalinks. Specific installation instructions for blog hosting services are on the widget configuration page: platform configuration (requires you to SIGN UP!)

** What customization options does the widget offer?

The widget can be configured to the colors and dimensions of your choosing. You will be prompted to do so upon installing the widget but you can adjust this configuration at any time by returning to the configuration page: platform configuration

** How can I track the performance of the widget?

You can track your widget performance on the widget stats page: platform stats where we provide you with charts for widget views, widget clicks as well as general site stats - articles, new commenters and unique commenters. Ad revenue stats will be available shortly.

** How do I make money with this widget?

This widget comes pre-packaged with contextual ads and we share the ad revenue with you 50/50. You will need to provide us with your real name and address on the earnings page: earnings page. When your earnings exceed $100 and we will follow up with you to determine your tax information.

** Can I install this widget if I already run Adsense on my site?

Yes. Our in-widget ads will not conflict with Adsense.

You've Just Installed the Widget...

** Why do I not see the widget on my site's homepage?

This widget will only be displayed on single-entry (permalink) pages. It will not be visible on your site's homepage, archive pages, or search pages. (Any page the widget appears on can be produced as a related result, and it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to send people to those pages most of the time)

** Can I go back and change the widget configuration once installed?

Yes. You can go back change widget dimensions and color scheme on the widget configuration page at any time: http://platform.searchles.com/platform.configurator Just click update to produce your updated embed code.

** How can I control the number of related posts listed in the widget?

Number of related posts listed is dictated by the height/width/font size chosen for your widget. The larger the dimension chosen, the more related posts listed, and vice versa.

** Can I embed the widget code in my sites other than the site URL I registered with?

No. The widget code will only work in the site URL you registered with. If you would like to install the widget on multiple sites you will have to use a separate client registration for each. We apologize for this inconvenience but it is currently necessary for widget stats and revenue tracking purposes. There is a feature coming soon that will allow you to cross-reference sites, so you can provide related content among several different sites, so stay tuned!

** The widget has been on my site for a few hours - why is it empty or displaying irrelevant posts?

Your pages are indexed through your RSS feed and when someone visits a page where the widget is installed.
- This means that it may be several minutes before results show up in the widget.
- To increase the speed which pages are indexed, after you install the widget, try visiting the last 20 or so pages of your blog to make sure they are indexed properly.
- Over the next day (or so, depending on how much traffic your blog receives) we will fill in the data.
- Note: RELEVANCY MAY SUCK FOR THE FIRST FEW HOURS until we get a better picture of your data, and will continue to improve over the first few days.
- We are working to make indexing move a little faster, but right now we need to rely on people hitting your older articles for them to be indexed.