Serph Blog

New Feature: User Domain Blacklists

Posted by Michael Simmons   •   35 Comments

By far one of our biggest requests is the ability to create a custom blacklist of domains to block from search results. Today we are launching this setting for all accounts. Just head over to your settings page and click on “Blacklist”.

Your blacklist can include an unlimited amount of domains you want to block from being seen on your search results. Every domain is separated by a line break (return key). For best results please exclude “http://”, “www.”, and slashes. A typical list should look like this:

xyz.com
abc.com
…

Currently, this list only applies to search results on serph.com and not RSS feeds. We are working on bringing this to the feeds shortly.

By using this feature you are also helping us make Serph better. Every so often we are going to look through everyones blacklist and see which domains merit complete removal from our search results. So if you see a site that is either spam or inappropriate, please add it.

Please leave your feedback in the comments below.

Coming Out of Beta

Posted by Cameron Olthuis   •   8 Comments

We are officially bringing Serph out of beta today. Our beta testing has gone extremely well, much better than we expected. For the last couple of months we have rolled out improvements to Serph based on feedback from our users. We’d like to thank all of those who participated and provided feedback and altered us to bugs throughout the beta.

We still encourage everyone to provide feedback and offer suggestions for desired features. Just because we are now out of beta doesn’t mean that we’ll stop improving Serph, or that there won’t be any bugs that you run into.

Welcome to Serph

Posted by Cameron Olthuis   •   10 Comments

If you’re reading this post I’m sure you at least have a basic idea of what Serph is about. However, if this is your first encounter with us here is a brief overview. Serph is a search engine that can be used to find information on things that people are saying right now. It is a buzz tracker that goes out and searches various social media sites when you type in a query. The results are then sorted, organized and listed by the most recent.

Some of the social media sites that Serph uses are: Technorati, Digg, YouTube, Flickr, Google Blog Search, Bloglines, and Newsvine. The reason we created Serph is to make it easy to search all of these social media sites in one-easy to use interface. We were tired of having to manually search through them all.

Serph is commonly used to see what people are saying about your company, products, public facing figures, competitors, and industry. Some people use it to track the latest buzz on certain news events as they are happening, such as the Superbowl. Others simply use it for vanity searches.

One of the questions I get a lot is how is this different from Google or Yahoo? The difference is that Google and Yahoo do not help you find what is happening right now. The results are often very dated and a person might have to search many pages deep to find the new stuff, and by time it is even indexed a few days have passed. Those few days can prove to be extremely critical when it comes to tracking and responding to your buzz. With Serph, the results are listed by the most recent and the results are near time. This helps you track and respond to things as they are being said.

Serph is a product of ACS, a full service online marketing agency. We are also the people behind Crazy Egg and SiteBlimp. We hope you find Serph as a useful tool and please understand that we are still in beta so Serph is not perfect at this point. We still have a long way to go and look forward to hearing your feedback so we can improve. Please make sure you let us know if you come across any bugs, think of some desired features or any other ways we can improve Serph. Serphs Up!

Round One Of Serph Improvements

Posted by Michael Simmons   •   4 Comments

The first week of private beta testing has been a great ride. We’ve received dozens of feedback from our users. Throughout the past week we were rolling out improvements to Serph based on user feedback.

1. Firefox and Internet Explorer 7 search plugins are fully functional
2. Single and double quotes are now allowed in the search form
3. The settings page conveys changes properly
4. “Recent Searches” is updated properly
5. Interface fixes
6. Overall improvement to system performance

Visualize Serph Results Using Apple’s RSS Screen Saver

Posted by Michael Simmons   •   4 Comments

Apple’s Mac OS X comes with a awesome RSS screen saver that takes any feed you are subscribed to in Safari and turns it into gorgeous text-scrapers with a sky-like background using Quartz.

Here is how to add any Serph results feed to the screen saver:

1. Go to Serph and search for any hot buzz topic you want
2. Click on the RSS button either on the page or in the address bar
3. Bookmark the feed and place it somewhere where you can find it
4. Open up System Preferences and go to “Desktop & Screen Saver”
5. On the left-hand side choose “RSS Visualizer”
6. Click on the “Options” button
7. Choose the Serph RSS feed you want to use from the list and click “Done”

You’re all set. Now sit back and let yourself be engulfed in the shiny buzz-ness.

Adding Serph to your Inquisitor Menu

Posted by Michael Simmons   •   2 Comments

One of the coolest things about Firefox is the ability to search any web site directly from the top of the browser. Us Safari users aren’t that lucky. The solution for us is something called Inquisitor from David Watanabe. It’s actually a lot cooler than Firefox’s tool because it actually returns live results from Google (and a bunch of others) right in the menu without ever leaving the page you’re on.

Inquisitor allows you to add links to additional search engines in the results menu. Below is how to add Serph to your menu.

1. Install Inquisitor if you haven’t already
2. Open the Inquisitor preference pane by going to Safari > Preferences, and clicking on the “Search” tab
3. Make sure “Display links to additional search engines” is checked and click on the “Edit Sites” button
4. Click on the + icon under the list and choose “New custom search shortcut…”
5. Enter “Serph” (or whatever you want to call us) as the site name
6. Enter this exact URL under the URL column:
   http://search.serph.com/do/browser/?query=%@
   Your screen should look something like this:
   
7. Click done and enjoy.

This is the first article in our Tips & Tricks section for Serph. Stay tuned for more.

Your Account Information and Commenting

Posted by Michael Simmons   •   28 Comments

As a convenience, when you are logged into Serph and comment on the blog we automatically auto-fill your information in the comments form with your name and email address.

You can change this information at any time by editing the fields in the comment form or updating your account information on the settings page. Please note that once you comment using the information in the form, edited or auto-filled from your settings, it will be permanent for that comment.

As an added bonus when you comment on the blog using the same email address we have on file, we will add a “Member” flag to every comment you make. This will tell others that you are a valued member of Serph.

Please rest assured that your email address will never be published for public view. For more information we recommend reading over our Privacy Policy.