Using The EzineArticles Advanced Search

A few months ago we realized that the regular and advanced search in our left navigation was being hammered so hard that it was slowing the entire site down. On an average day, we deliver a low of 12,000 queries to a high of 35,000 queries and because of that, we’ve dedicated a high-end server to search services only.

Most folks know about our left nav search box, but very few use our advanced search option.

From the ADVANCED SEARCH engine on our site, you can create very specific searches by:

• Keyword or keyphrase
• Which component of the article you want to search in
• Which category (over 300+ to choose from) you want to search in *or* all of them
• Which country you want to search in *or* all of them (very handy if you want to isolate your search to the perspective of someone from your own country)
• Whether you want only Platinum level articles (separates the wheat from the chaff)
• If you want an Exact match or Any match on your search
• And you can narrow your search by word count (very handy for publishers looking for content that matches their word count ideal match)

One of our internal goals is to unlock the quality/quantity of content within EzineArticles.com so that publishers and users of our site can find lightning-fast access to the exact type of content or information they are seeking. We’ll continue for now to use the Google-enhanced search engine on top of the site, but for direct access to the entire database of articles, you’ll want to use the left navigation search engine.

Examples of some typical uses of the advanced search engine:

You’re searching for “halloween costumes” and only want articles over 800 words in length.

You’re searching for “crm” solutions in the “Sales Management” category and only want results from Platinum authors in the United Kingdom.

You’re searching for “angel” [investing] in the new “Venture Capital” category only and you want results from any author in the United States only.

You’re searching for “christopher m. knight” [or your own name for that matter] in the TITLE of any article in any category in any country by any author with a word count in excess of 200 words.

Do you see how this advanced search can help you quickly find very specific content/info within EzineArticles.com?

:-)

Any recommendations to us for improvement on our advanced search engine?

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on October 17, 2006 at 7:40 am

Views 908 |

7 Comments »

1

Susan Scharfman writes:

Yes, Chris. Highlight your advanced search engine in some way, or place it “above the fold.” You’re right. Especially for folks like me who are not that search savvy yet, I never paid attention to it.
Thanks, Susan.

Comment provided October 17, 2006 at 10:20 am

2

Edward Weiss writes:

You know, with that kind of volume, you could create your own search engine just for articles. You could call it “Article Search” or something like that. Just an idea.

Comment provided October 17, 2006 at 1:20 pm

3

Lance Winslow writes:

I believe Edward makes a good point indeed. Also I think a dedicated server for searching makes sense. Personally, I also use EzineArticles.com as my back-up for my articles. And often it is easier to search my content on this site rather than my own computer or Back-up drive. Meaning that I store my articles here and can retrieve them at any time to look something up. Kind of like my add-on memory. Often I look stuff up and send people who have questions about my industry sub-sectors to this site to search my articles on that subject. It pays to do this so I do not have to re-explain something for which I already have an entire article or many for. I think speeding up the seach feature is very wise and you will be glad you did it.

Comment provided October 17, 2006 at 3:59 pm

4

Lance Winslow writes:

OFF TOPIC: It would be nice if this site had a special section where Authors could hook-up with each other for projects. Such as place a “Want Ad” or “I am looking for help with” or “Looking for a Partner for.”

The reason I mention this is that I do quite a bit of networking with others from this site and I think many people are missing potential alliances, co-marketing exploits and networking opportunities to do what they do better with a little help from friends here.

I realize there is Forum on this site, which could work well for that, but it is not used as much as it could be by all the authors here. The reason this came to mind is that with this advanced search feature it makes it easy to narrow the queries to find exactly the type of person who you need to help you with projects and it will help them by being easy to find. A thought?

Comment provided October 17, 2006 at 5:31 pm

5

Mike Valentine writes:

Chris, This may be a bit tangential to your post, but I’m sure you are aware of the new Google Custom Search Engine (CSE) tool made available to publishers this past week. I came up with a novel idea for a CSE I created for my Small Business Ecommerce Tutorial at WebSite101 last week - that is to include EzineArticles.com in the list of sites searched, in this case for “Small Business Health Insurance.”

The reason for this is to provide people with resources that provide INFORMATION on the topic, rather than pure insurance sales sites. That custom search engine provides a lot of EzineArticles results mixed in with department of labor, small business administration, Kaiser Foundation, National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) and other trusted sites.

Just thought you’d like to know of another way EzineArticles is being used and the connection to search. I intend to do the same for other custom search engines in different topic areas on WebSite101 as well. I’ll include EzineArticles as a source of different search topics because it has a such a rich resource of available material from experts on dozens of topics and would be a valuable resource for those custom search engines.

I’m submitting an article on this later. Hope you like it!

Mike Valentine

Comment provided November 1, 2006 at 2:57 pm

6

Christopher M. Knight writes:

Mike V,

Way cool!

Google’s CSE sounds like a Eurekster or Rollyo product destroyer… meaning, they are muting what 3rd parties have been trying to create.

Here’s a link for others that may be interested in reading about it: http://www.google.com/coop/cse/overview

About 6 months ago I had created a CSE with Eurekster for the Ezine Publishing world and was blown away with how accurate the SERPS were…and I can only imagine Google’s CSE will rock also. :-)

Comment provided November 2, 2006 at 10:08 am

7

Christopher M. Knight writes:

Mike,

I just read your article:
Google Custom Search Engine (CSE) - New Vertical Search Tools for Publishers

And you hit the nail perfectly when you talked about EzineArticles being a ‘trusted’ source of expert info. That’s one of our internal guiding principles. :-)

Comment provided November 2, 2006 at 1:23 pm

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