Berlin – Hamburger Hofbahn Art Gallery (via City Stroller)

I haven’t seen such a beautiful and magical photo in a long, long time….

Photo submitted by © Martin Field [click on photo to enlarge] Note by Martin Field Berlin Entrance to The Hamburger Hofbahn Art Gallery Winter in the early evening – The snow fell whilst we looked at the exhibits. When we came out it was a new & magical view. Links : Follow Martin on Twitter – martinfield1 Visit Martin's website – www.martin-field.com … Read More

via City Stroller

Why I prefer Google Custom Search to WordPress.com search to add site search tags (c) Netty Gritty

Adding site search tags using wordpress.com search is not new, Lorelle did it for a long time in her blog. Now, why would you prefer Google Custom Search and not wordpress.com default search?

The answer
Wordpress.com search result pages are not always up to the mark.

Explanation
Isn’t it only natural that if I search for something, the search result page will reveal multiple links so that I can choose if there is anything worthy of my attention?

I chose a site search tag link from Lorelle’s blog:
links – http://lorelle.wordpress.com/index.php?s=links

It goes to this url:

http://lorelle.wordpress.com/index.php?s=links

And it reveals multiple links from Lorelle’s site. That’s pretty impressive! That means, the visitor has a lot to choose from.

So I followed Lorelle’s footsteps and searched my site for links.

I only have to change the blogname in order to make the search specific for my blog.

Lorelle’s url:

http://lorelle.wordpress.com/index.php?s=links

My url after changing the blog name:

http://shongjog.wordpress.com/index.php?s=links

When I paste the above url in the address bar, it brings me to a search result page that shows links for links from my blog.

But the sight of this page makes me so sad!The search result page shows full posts, and not excerpts, as in Lorelle’s search page! That is so user-unfriendly!

Compare the search result pages side-by-side

The reason behind the anomaly
Now, why did that happen? It happens because of the difference in themes. Some wordpress.com themes show full posts in search result pages (as in inove, the theme of my blog), while other search pages reveal excerpts.

Themes that show excerpts naturally has room for more links to be shown in the front page, but themes that show full posts in search results and so multiple links are visible only if:

- the posts are really really short or
- post truncation is applied (using the more tag) after a first intro in every post or
- pagination is applied in all posts after a short intro.

Why Google custom search engine is better that wordpress.com search
Google Custom Search allows me to present to my viewers multiple links at one glance. No matter which theme you use, it will always pull a list of links.

So if I use Google Custom Search for my blog to search for links, the search result page produces links to a list of posts, that are easy to browse.

See the search page for Links in Google Custom Search Engine for my blog.

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