Lijit is a search tool/widget that you easily install on your blog. It lets you provide a comprehensive search of almost everything that you want, including integration with popular social networking tools such as Facebook. Lijit creates custom Google searches with your search items and then, I assume, puts up their own Google Ads in the searches. I happen to think search statistics are very important for a blogger to understand user trends, likes and dislikes. I noticed Lijit for the first time while reading about Kindling on A VC and the name Lijit reminded me of Lijjat (which is a snack from India). I did setup an account to test out the services and you can see it at work on the sidebar of this blog. The popular search cloud and pretty cool set of stats are the killer set of features I was looking for. Give it a whirl on the sidebar.
If you have tried Lijit, what are your thoughts?
seems like Lijit make money from AdSense ads. I wish the bloggers can apply their own adsense ID to the search widget…
why use this when you can put your own CSE on your blog, cash in your own Adsense money and get the stats on your own Google Analytics dashboard?
I have been using Lijit for the past two months due to the ability to add tiny social networking links to the search “wijit” (their word, not mine). A central repository for my social identity, if you will.
I care less about the ability to track the statistics (or ad revenue for that matter) and more about potential users’ ability to search anything I have written through a single defined location.
I have tried the search a few times, and I see that my personal filtering through ad-blocking and CSS-hacking has an impact on the functionality of the Lijit tool for the end-user (you have to turn off adblock – this is the only real problem I have seen).
thus far, i think its pretty cool. a lot more interactive than the standard search form i was using. i had also used swicki for a while and it just never seemed to work correctly, even after hours of tinkering. i do wish you could add your adsense id, but its something i only make pennies a day with. even though with more that 2500 visitors a day, i have been told i should make more. i am going to put it to the readers and see if they dig this or not.
Good tool. One question – Does it offer me an opportunity to make money? 😀
great widget, i should put it on blog too
I gave it a whirl, but it couldn’t ‘see’ my Flickr content in the search, and it’s all a bit too heavily branded to become part of my site. Nice idea though, if it can be made more stylable and actually provide me with some ad income, rather than other people, then I might try it again…
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