Wanna see a cool hack? Fire up Lijit Live 3D. This is semi-real time view (there are some delays built in to prevent you from getting nauseous) in Google Earth of the geolocation of searches going on across the blogs that have installed and are actively using Lijit search.
The geolocation data is coming from Quova – another investment of ours. Lijit told me the integration was trivial, which is great feedback. Seeing this on a 30” screen at 7:30 in the morning is mesmerizing.
Update: There is a 2D version up that is equally entrancing.
Having run Lijit on my site for about six months, I’m seeing a fascinating increase in page views. About 5% of my daily uniques do a search. Each search generates another 5 page views. So by using Lijit search I increase my daily page views by 25%. I’m encouraging my friends at Lijit to quantify this across the system (and make it explicit for each publisher) – a 25% increase in page views just by putting the Lijit search wijit on a blog is powerful.
If these numbers hold across the system, Lijit’s motto can change from “we make blog search suck less” to “we increase your page views.” If you are a publisher (e.g. blogger), give Lijit a try.