Can't Find a Website Search I Like!

Eden Plush Baby Peter Rabbit Animals

I've tried bunch of free to try software packages that provide a website search, but so far nothing does what I want. I've about decided to pay a programmer to do it for me. We're also considering pulling all our toys off eBay and just using that for our vintage collectibles. There are lots of pros and cons on that one, so we're in no hurry to decide.

I did pay the $100 to try the Business Version of Google's Custom Search. But the directions were basically no less confusing than the regular Custom Search. Looks like all you are really paying for is not having their ads on the page. I canceled it the same day I bought it, and did not have any problem getting my money back.

So I continue to take photos and add to our catalog, making do with the Catalog Search I have for now that is the Google Base search page.

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We hope you will find the lovey you are looking for in our DIRTY BUTTER Plush Animals and Soft Dolls CATALOG. But we have many more toys in stock than we have listed, so please Contact Us if you don't see what you are looking for. If we don't have it in stock, we will search the Internet for it. If we still can't find it, we will post your request on our Plush Memories Lost Toy Search Service.

Haven't Found a Website Search Form I Like Yet

Plush Baby Dolls

I seem to be stuck on finding exactly what I want for the Search on our Catalog. What I am using now is a refined Google Base Search, but that is on a separate Google page, and not part of our own website. It also, since it is a Google page, has links to other sellers. That's not a good idea, but will have to do until I can find better.

Something else I have realized I need to do is to put a bookmark link to each of the photos on a given catalog page, so when someone does click on the search item it will take them straight to that item, not just the page it is on. Again, a website designer would have already done that to begin with, but I am learning all this the hard way, by trial and error. More error - it seems like! LOL!!

But, we are making sales from the Catalog, so for that I am grateful.

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We hope you will find the lovey you are looking for in our DIRTY BUTTER Plush Animals and Soft Dolls CATALOG. But we have many more toys in stock than we have listed, so please Contact Us if you don't see what you are looking for. If we don't have it in stock, we will search the Internet for it. If we still can't find it, we will post your request on our Plush Memories Lost Toy Search Service.

Waiting on Google to Index our Catalog

Eden Plush Baby Dolls

OK, I have the beginnings of our products Searchable on Google Base now, thanks to the free trial of SingleFeed I'm using. It costs $4.99 a month, but they fix the mistakes in the data feed so it does not get denied by Google.

You may ask why I'm paying someone to send the feed to Google Base.

The answer is simple.

I never could figure out what I was doing wrong, and Google is no help at all.

You can pay more at SingleFeed and use one form to submit to lots of different shopping search engines like Shopping.com, but Google will be enough for our needs. I have already sent three feeds to them, and it was not hard at all, as I already had most of what they wanted in an Excel file already, thanks to my attempts to send the data feed to Google on my own.

Now my problem is that our plushcatalog.dirtybutter.com subdomain has not been Indexed by Google yet, so I can't create a working Custom Search Engine to put on our catalog pages yet. I have sent a Site Map of the subdomain to Google, so all I can do now is wait. As I add items to the catalog I will send a new SingleFeed upload, update the Site Map, and keep on waiting.

It's that wait that prompted me to start this blog about the process of starting our own website sales. Google is good about indexing blogs pretty quickly, but puts new websites in what is called the sandbox. Basically it means they hold onto new sites for awhile before they acknowledge their existence, in an attempt to discourage spammers from flooding their searches with fake sites. I understand why they do it, but it is very frustrating for those legitimate sellers like us who are trying to get a place in the search engine.

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We hope you will find the lovey you are looking for in our DIRTY BUTTER Plush Animals and Soft Dolls CATALOG. But we have many more toys in stock than we have listed, so please Contact Us if you don't see what you are looking for. If we don't have it in stock, we will search the Internet for it. If we still can't find it, we will post your request on our Plush Memories Lost Toy Search Service.