I am seeing the same complaints over and over all over this forum, and have a few of my own to add to the list, and think you all should be reading this and taking what's posted here to heart.

If you want to reference the original thread, click here :
http://www.getpaidforum.com/forums/index.p...howtopic=256938


1) We want RELEVANT results. When we search for clothing, we do not want to see FREE X-BOX or Buy Viagra online GARBAGE in the results. It's bull and it's pointless. We aren't going to click on a buy viagra link when we're not looking for viagra.

2) We do NOT want to see links to 40 other search engines in our results. This is redundant and pointless. If we wanted to search at another search engine, we would have gone to that one to begin with.

3) Get rid of these cheesy portals with graphics and text that are NOT readable, including this teeny tiny hard to read type. I understand you want to customize your portal to make it more noticable and rememberable, but backgrounds of mountain pictures with text of different colors is NOT always (and usually) readable.

4) I am SICK to death of EVERY single portal that is advertised having the following junk on it and nothing else or anything useful to click on, or is missing the search box where I can type in what I want to look for :
a) online pharmacy - one link is sufficient, we don't need 14 different versions of this link on every portal
hydrocodone, viagra, paxil, lortab etc - how many people ACTUALLY look for this, unless they're looking for information on the drug, rather than the online pharmacies that charge just as much as your local pharmacy does?
c) Online dating programs - who cares?
d) Trading forex or other BS like MLM, online trading, etc.
e) Links that are so close together that you can't tell where one ends and the other begins
f) Lack of dividers (IE - comma, dash, etc) between links
g) 14 different ways to search for going to college online (of course, most any of these will produce the same exact result as the other 13 versions)
h) State or city specific searches - IE Georgia Divorce, New York Apartments (most of the people clicking are NOT going to be interested in what happens in a completely different area like that, and the vast majority of people are NOT going to be from that area)
i) All the dozens of keywords to gambling sites. One or two should be more than sufficient.
j) Irrelevant links under catagories - IE Hydrocodone under Shopping and Gambling Links under Games

5) Put some USEFUL keywords on these pages and PLEASE include the search box. Most of the time, you have nothing on that portal I'm interested in, and several portals seem to think that your dozen or so different choices are sufficient. They AREN'T

6) This junk about how we've reached a maximum number of clicks. Sometimes i get that on the FIRST link I click and I'm on a dedicated IP. Secondly, sometimes I actually can find something I'm looking for on these searches, and may have 3, 4 or 5 relevant links I want to visit. This prevents that from happening and it's VERY irritating.

7) Errors - Page cannot be displayed, blank pages, apache errors, proxy errors - you guys really need to invest in your own servers if you're going to be running a search engine. If you need help with this, let me know and I can point you in about 40 directions that are good, not excluding myself. The other errors... who knows. SE Portal advertisers need to check things out before sending out ads and make sure these things actually work.

8) Popups and downloaded junk, including viruses - This is just absolutely unecessary.

9) 15 of the same site showing up in the results. What good does it do to search if you're only going to show us 1 link or one site? (Example - I search for computer parts because I build computers and am looking for good places to buy parts and I get a full page of nothing but links to Dell. I know where Dell is, I can find it easy enough on my own. I want to see OTHER places that sell computer parts)

10) SsssssLlllllllllllOooooooooooWwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww server, loading results, etc. - If your page isn't going to load in under 10-15 seconds, then you have no business providing a search engine.

11) Search engines that show EXACTLY the same results as 12 different search engines show. Come on, guys... try to get some other advertisers. Produce a variety of results, not just the same 5 sites everyone else has. Maybe add some free listings in there to help give you a variety.

12) Having links say one thing, but actually linking to another keyword altogether. Example - you click on Blank CD Media and get taken to the results for buy viagra online.


That's all I can think of for the moment. Anyone else have anything to add?


Hopefully you SE owners and portal advertisers will listen to us and make some VERY needed changes to how you do things to make searching not only more profitable, but actually USEFUL for those of us who DO actually perform valid searches.



Edited to add link to original topic, and numbers 8 & 9

Edited to add proxy errors

Edited again to add more comments based on post #5

Edited to add #12

Thank you, but I think you missed one ...... Proxy error's, I know I'm not behind a proxy of any kind, in fact I tested it on many different proxy detection sites and they all came up with the fact I am not behind or using a proxy of any kind.
And I think that some of the software these search engine's use to detect IP's are not even detecting the correct IP for an individual computer.
With all this hub-bub preventing someone to do a relavent search, I for one would rather use a more reliable search engine such as Excite or MSN if I really want to find what I'm looking for, at least with these I don't get "Sorry you've reached your limit", "Too bad your using a Proxy, can't help you find what your looking for" ,"sorry your search for "Dog food" turned up no relsuts,would Viagra do?"

I edited and added. thank ya!

Thank you, maybe some of these SE owner's such as easysearchall can explain why we get "Viagra" or "Green X-Box's" or "Free Fortune telling" when we look for "Dog food" LOL

I'd like to add a few of my pet peeves. On the portal page, please use a font that is actually readable. Forget the animation graphics, I'm not there to watch a show. I've seen a few lately with multiple categories but all of the keywords were either gambling sites or drug sites. For instance, Games would be nothing but gambling sites, Shopping is nothing but drugs. I'M NOT SHOPPING FOR DRUGS! Be sure the SE actually loads a page of results. I have many that never get past the portal page. I am not going to sit there for 2-3 minutes waiting for your slow server to load results. If other SE's can load fast so can yours. Find out what they are doing and DO IT!

Google has never told me I can only do 3 searches per day and neither should you.

In short, don't make it so difficult for us to search and you just might see better results!


PS: I don't do surveys on what I'm searching for and what program I'm searching through.

AMEN!

I try very hard to do valid searches when I click on a search link. I usually do so many searches, I hit my limit in just about every search engine that is advertised through PTR.

Here lately though, it's a major hassle to completely ONE search. Now, I want to be supportive and all, but I'm sorry I am NOT going to spend half an hour trying to complete one search! We're not "paid" enough for that at all!

Then, advertisers are going to come here and complain about dismal results ... well HELLO! Maybe if we could get some results to click on we would. Novel idea eh?



- Jenn -

I can't agree more Maybe the people that owns SE's will se our point when reading this

edited to include comments from other posters

Edited to say:

You cannot tell me that it does not annoy you to see a page with 10 - 20 keywords all directed at either drugs or casinos. Especially if the site has nothing to do with either....plus having no search box to make your own search.

Sorry, but that annoys me. I completely skip those ones!

I personally don't care if there are 10 or 1000 choices, mostly I want to do my own search.

If you have too many links, though, it just makes it harder to find the ones we want, if we want to use one that's provided.

Thats what I took in to mind when I designed my search engine with the portal, I set it up so it has 12 catagories, tried to pick stuff people were actually interested in.none of that MLM, Viagra garbage. The catagories are actual catagories with sub catagories and when searchers search the engine returns results from sponsors as well as results from MSN and actual real search engines, for the most part the engine loads fast, I added small things in like the ability to define search words similar to Google plus when people search it returns other keywords within the same catagory so people can refine there search, the portal keywords are seperated by comas and I just recently added a dynamic portal so people can send traffic direct or to there portal. Glad I actually took most of that stuff to heart before ever reading this post lol

I clicked on your link and viewed your search engine's home page.

VERY NICE

now if more people would follow suit...


though, personally...... msn doesn't really provide good results IMO. I prefer google hands down over all others.

At some point I hope to xml feed google in, the engine does return reults from Alta vista though, but I do agree Google is great and it even provides an avenue to catching alot of those vagrant IP addresses people use to cheat with.

mailmoreinfo,

I really like your search page !! Easy on the eyes, not a bunch of hi and everything is in categories!! Nicely done!!

Too bad the real sites behind the proxy/click errors wont see this. Sites like ah-ha, 7search, etc dont bother with sites like this...

I totally agree with you here!!

Dude.... I understand a lot of what you're saying, but really, when you're on this side of it... it's a completely different story.

that can't be totally true, because some of the SE's have already applied these types of things to them, and most of this stuff is real basic

I agree but do ya realy think they will listen we can always hope. The search engines have over run the industry...sad realy.
Georgina

They need to listen or they'll end up going out of business. These things affect their ability to earn money, and the ones who don't address the things mentioned in post 1 can cause them to loose enough business that they can go under to the other engines that actually do.

I think these search engines many of them anyway, don't care about the long term.

They just want as many quick bucks as possible then they create a new site and do it again.

Some are good yes, but maybe more than half are bad.

This is why they are so difficult to use and filled with so many incredulous links.

Some of what is mentioned here is easy to fix however some of it is impossible. One of these being, we can not control the search results, just because we may run the search engine doesnt give us a lick of control over how the reults are displayed. Yes its irritating to search for Dog food and have 40 listings returned on how to make extra money off viagra, but the problem is is that advertisers buy bid of these keywords and actually pay to be listed under many of the popular keywords. As far as getting results from other search engine in your results, well other search engines are advertisers too so if they buy a keyword listing and just want there search results displayed then thats what they get. Its all about what the advertiser happens to want and what the feed chooses to send us. We have absolutely no control or say so in what gets displayed unfortuantely.

Some of what is mentioned here is easy to fix however some of it is impossible. One of these being, we can not control the search results, just because we may run the search engine doesnt give us a lick of control over how the reults are displayed. Yes its irritating to search for Dog food and have 40 listings returned on how to make extra money off viagra, but the problem is is that advertisers buy bid of these keywords and actually pay to be listed under many of the popular keywords. As far as getting results from other search engine in your results, well other search engines are advertisers too so if they buy a keyword listing and just want there search results displayed then thats what they get. Its all about what the advertiser happens to want and what the feed chooses to send us. We have absolutely no control or say so in what gets displayed unfortuantely.

If some things are easy to fix, then can search engines such as X-ray search fix it so people like me don't keep getting those Forbidden pages with Apache error's saying I can not access cgi/bin on this server messages.
Heck it makes me feel like I'm being accused of trying to hack their server or something every time I see this error page, for crying out loud I'm only trying to do a search for heavens sake.
In fact what does cause these "Forbidden" apache server error's? I heard or read that it has someting to do with a missing .index.html page or someting they should have uploaded?

hey i didn't know that! typical for these advertisers though. i certainly hope that these SEs who intend to stay around would take some of these advices. maybe, if they can help it, make their SE international as well. being from a non-search country, i feel discriminated!

Most of that is caused by webmasters that dont know what they are doing, there server just plain stinks or there feeds are always down for one reason or another. Plus some of these site owners open sites and just pay enough out of pocket to get by hence the cruddy hosting which gives off more errors than search results, or they simply dont run the necessary clean up programs to keep there systems from getting too full up etc. They also edit files that they dont have any business editing because they dont understand what they are doing, they try to install there own feed and screw it up so there wiating for support, the list just goes on and on lol

As far as those international search engines go, even those pay a majority to the UK, Canada, and the USA because the advertisers in PPC marketing are just more abundant than in other locations.

well your response explains it some what, thank you. I was beginning to think that I was "doing something wrong" when I get these error pages, like I was trying to access someting I shouldn't be LOL
However, this could explain why people are waiting so long to be paid by these search engine's as it would explain why so many searches people do are comming up invalid?
Sometimes I get these error pages right when I visit a search portal page, but sometimes I don't get them until I either click a key-word from the search list of words or type one in myself. With X-ray search, I always get the "Forbidden error page after I click on a key word or type a search in and click on a result, by then the timer for the ad I may have read has already given my PTR account credit, and this makes me feel rather guilty.
If I see an ad that specifies that it is for X-ray search I avoid it, but sometimes people have search portals that use X-ray as one of their search feeds and I don't know until it's too late, or the email ad isn't specific as to what search engine they are promoting, GRRH!!! this is just so frustrating

I do notice one thing that seems to be common in these Forbidden page error's is that they all say something about not being allowed to access smartsearch/cgi-bin/
I know a lot of searches use smartsearch, what ever that is, including your search engine in your sig which I tried with no problem, so this only concludes then that it's a problem with the the actual Search engine or portal and the way they may have it setup, and not to do with smartsearch rejecting my attempt to search

Just want to add the problems of result links taking you back to the search portal page. Very annoying. And also the lack of search results for some engines, I WILL NOT search for like 50 keywords in order to find ONE that will actually come up with a result link.

Same here. That's irritating for me. I mean, for example.. if I type in gothic jewelry. You'd think that even EBAY would pull up on some of these, but they turn up zero listings..

however other search engines pull up nothing but results from other search engines. Sometimes I go ahead and click through, and I happened to find 8 new sites that carry what I am looking for.

Wanna bet I got some new items on my wishlist.. lol

Then how come if I do a search for the exact keyword at google, I don't get all this hi. Another irritant that hasn't been mentioned is when you click on one of the keywords listed on the se's own home page and get the infamous "that search has been deemed inappropriate"...if this is the case why is it a keyword on your own front page

Point there. I run into that alot too.

My biggest irk is the no results or the search engine results, though i've been clicking on the search engine results lately and have been finding some dang good leads for products.


I wonder why we are not hearing more from SE owners and advertisers (portal owners) on this topic?

99% of portal owners probably don't care, and if confronted would say it's the engine owner's problem. I'm surprised you had as many engine owners as you did come here. Anyway, I am making some changes myself to S4L based on what I've seen in this thread.

I'm so sorry, but i simply could Not let it slide.

WONDERFUL!!

If we've helped make 1 site more searchable and able to provide more/better results and make everyone more money, then that's one less site we have to worry about

As far as the portal owners.. that's really sad.

I was really happy to hear from the owners that did come in and comment thus far.

Hopefully this discussion isn't over yet.

Oh man, snowwolf, AMEN to most of that!

I'm getting SO tired lately of searches coming up "Page Not Found" - either on a keyword or clicking on a result.




~ Ambrie ~

Well today I did a search on Easysearchall and actualy got results for what I was looking for ,not the same old X-Box or Fortune teller ads, hopefully this is a good sign, but this only happened once today, hopefully next time I see an Easysearchall search and get good reuslts, will keep you allposted either way on this because today could have been a fluke
Also a couple engine's that were giving me the "Over Proxy limit" message's have actually let me complete a full search, not all the engine's I might add just a few; and again this only happened once today so will see how it goes on these same SE's next time, if I get good results because again this could be just a fluke:)
So hopefully some SE owner's have read this thread and see that their site's maybe having some sort of technical difficulties.
However I still get those Forbidden Apache page error's for X-ray search , Dynamite, Searchandshop, Seekate and a coupl other's.

i don't think I've ever seen your SE advertised, I tried it from your sig and it seems to work fine for me with actual relevant results for what I searched for; very fast loading too . But may I make a suggestion regarding your title, the font you used is very hard to decipher the name of your site, it looks like it says: Searchalancer, the "4" in your Site tile looks so much like an "A" when it runs into the "H" beside it , sorry I'm picky when it comes to graphic's

Pming you.....

The one thing I hate is if the search box is disabled. If I don't want to search for drugs, gambling or "dating'" I should have the option of searching for something else. I don't complete a search on these sites.

Well it looks like it was a fluke afterall , did another Easysearchall search and got the same old "Green X-Box" and "Paid Survey" links after doing a search for Lawyer's , oh well , I guess it was too good to be true

Theres many search engines that dont even bother to run tests or some of them are just cheap and after fast money so they only buy 1 feed and well when that feed is offline you get no search results. Thats another reason why my engine Feeds in to Alta vista and MSN but I run more than one feed so the odds of getting an error returned are very unlikely, at the most you would just get some periods of the day where the results might take 10 or 15 seconds to display.

As far as cgi errors go thats most commonly caused by the webmaster trying to edit something they have no clue how to edit, or it could just be the server they are hosted on is poorly configured or maby the webmaster didnt plan ahead and plan to have to upgrade if need be.

Theres alot of variables, its not always the webmasters fault but alot of times it is because you would be surprised how many webmasters are actually operating web sites that have not got even the slightest clue about how there scripts work or even how there server works.

This used to be my biggest pet peeve about searches. Now it doesn't bother me at all cause if there's no searchbox for me to search what I want to search for then I just don't search.

Really!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I don't remember ever getting the wrong results from ESA.

I haven't seen this for a long time but I got it today and I belong to zero search engines...None...I have never signed up at any and quit. So why do I get it and no...my firewall was not on.

Sorry. As an account holder yourself, you cannot click-through on certain links from this search engine.

The benefits you enjoy by being an affiliate or advertiser here depends on revenue flows being reserved for regular users that all of us are seeking to attract to the advertised sites.

I've gotten that one too and have never been an affiliate or account holder of any SE.