Below are some search engine scripts that I found while doing research, but I have not evaluated them in anyway, but did note when I found a user rating.

Premium Site Search Scripts

For a professional ecommerce site, I would recommend using a premium search script rather than a free search script.

http://www.site-search-pro.com/ $39 (high user rating)

http://www.freefind.com/plans.html paid ($19-$79)and free options

http://risearch.org/eng/risearch_php/index.html $10

http://www.aleadsoft.com/ $59 for standard or $99 for pro and has a free trial version.

Free Site Search Scripts

Free is a nice thing, but often times it does come with a price. The price for using a free site search script is often that in addition to searching your site, adds for other sites will appear in the search results. If potentially sending visitors away from your site does not bother you, then I would suggest signing up for a Google Adsense account and using the Google site search tool bar. In addition to the Google site search, I have also included several other free site search script options here as well.
http://www.jrank.org/

http://www.javascriptkit.com/script/script2/google_site_search.shtml

http://www.perlfect.com/freescripts/search/

http://www.google.com/coop/cse/

http://www.freefind.com/

Got any other site search engine scripts that could be added to the list?

After reading Techcrunches report about Picnik being live on Flickr , I went to the Flickr blog and read about the newest Flickr feature that enables online photo editing using Picnik’s Photo editing services.

To use the service while using Flickr, you must be signed it to your Flickr account, and then when viewing your photos, click the edit button at the top of one of your photos. You are then taken to Picnik where you see all the editing options that are available to you from a Picnik’s free account.

Its a pretty simple interface that includes such options as cropping, red eye reduction, color adjustments and more. There are plenty of advanced features available as well, but many more features can be obtained by upgrading your free account for a little less than 25 bucks a year. For someone who does not want to make the purchase of Photoshop, this might be an awesome tool to use for editing of photos. I will probably continue to use Photoshop, but I can also see myself using Picnik while using Flickr.

Also, while surfing the net, there is a Firefox addon, that lets you edit graphics online through the use of your right click menu. There is also an extension for IE if that is your browser of choice. Here is the Picnik tools page for a list of available photo editing tools .

In addition to Flickr, Picnik can also be used with Facebook, PhotoBucket, Picasa, and Webshots, and it’s API is available for others to use and develop for other applications.

What do You Think?

This is the first Internet based Photo Editing site that I have used or reviewed for that matter. While doing the review I was exposed to several other sites. Does anyone have any experience with any other photo editing sites? What do you think about PicniK?

Tags: photo editing, online photo editing, Flickr, Picnik, photography

With a bit of waffling, my top three pics in reverse order are:

3. The personal development post that teaches How to Solve A Problem.

2. Simonne’s post showing how to add Stumble Upon Pages to Your Feed Reader.

1. Megan’s Child Abuse post.

Before paying for a link, I always check to make sure that the page I am submitting to is cached. That is I copy the url, paste it into the Google search bar. If the page has been visited by the Google spiders, it will show up in the SERP’s.(Search Engine Result page). You can either submit to a page that Google has not visited and build links to the page so that you encourage Google to visit the page, or you can find a page that has been cached already.
What you can do is click around the different related categories of the directory, and copy and paste into the desired category page urls into the Google search bar until you find a cached page, or you can check the whole site to see what pages are cached using site:url. This will show you all the pages that are cached by Google. For example, putting site:http://www.pixelheadonline.com into the Google search bar, I see that 1,430 pages are cached in Google. Then all I need to do is page through the results and find an appropriate cached category page to submit my site.

1 more link building tip

If I go to the next level down in the directory, such as Business, and copy that url, and put in site:http://www.pixelheadonline.com/Business/ I can see that 17 sub-pages are cached. Using this method allows you to find cached subcategory pages in relevant categories without having to page through unrelated results.
So that is my tip for link building this post. Got any other link building tips you would like to share?

Update:

Check for cache with the site:url and with out the site:url. I believe that using the site:url returns pages that have been visited by the Google Spider that does deep searches, which are done with less frequency. If paying for links, I want to make sure that the links are cached by regular spiders as well as deep searching spiders for more Google juice for the link.

see Google Cache Update post for more current discussion.

Its not only me that sees this problem. In a DirectoryCritic Blog post Link Farm Clone Directories

says that characteristics of Clone Directories include:

• Loads of directories on the same IPs
• Directories that have obviously had no effort at all put into them (some don’t even have a template or don’t even have the logo changed – how hard is it?)
• Category clones (basically cloning a populated directory)

Directory Uniqueness

• What I look for in a good unique directory includes but not limited to changes to template if it is a popular template.
• Categories should also be edited, especially if the directory starts out using a category database.
• Add other features to the directory like articles, advertising opportunities, about us pages, contests, a directory blog, a directory forum, etc…
• Add text to the sub-pages as well as the home page. I have just started doing this to Pixelheadonline. Adding text can be as simple as adding a little paragraph of text to describe the category. It can also include the adding of articles.

Future of Directory Links

With all the clones out on the net, I believe that quality directories will become something that will be sought after. This will include directories that have not only a home page that is indexed in the search engines, but also has the majority of its sub-pages cached. When site owners start to have their site rankings hurt by using these bad linking neighborhoods, good directories will be in even higher demand.

Am I right? What do you think will happen to directories in the future? Will they go the way of the FFA (Free For All) pages?