Problem Utilizing Site Comber

[makemineirish]

I was not sure where to put this question, but decided on this forum because it is where the sticky about Site Comber is located.

I am familiar with the sticky on "How to Search on SoapMakingForum Like a Pro" and have used Site Comber a number of times over the years. However, the format seems to have changed recently. It used to be that when you went to the web address, there were two empty fields. The first was for your search term and the second for the site that you wanted to search within.

Now, it takes me to a page with only one field and promotional information on how to integrate Site Comber into your own webpage. If I type anything into the empty field (or nothing at all) and press enter, it takes me to the page that I am familiar with but with a long entry in the second field. I delete that and enter information into the search fields such as Awapuhi under "For:" and www.soapmakingforum.com under "Within:"

Typically, a list of results should appear beneath the fields. I could click on them to link to pertinent threads or posts. Now, no results appear, but the page seems to transfer my search term to a tiny Amazon engine in the right corner. All of the ads along the margins switch to Awapuhi-themed items on Amazon (in this case, a number of Paul Mitchell Awapuhi hair care products.):think:

Is the problem all on my end or do you guys experience the same thing if you try to utilize Site Comber now? I did not think that I was computer illiterate, but am a bit stymied right now.

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[IrishLass]

You are not alone, Makemineirish. I tried to search for something on Sitecomber last night and got the same runaround as you.

What I ended up doing on the Sitecomber page was to click on the grey box under the blank text bar that says "Create a search page for a specific website in 15 seconds".

When I did that, it brought up a page with a blank text bar that let me enter soapmakingforum.com in it, and then I clicked on 'create page', which then brought me to the search page I'm normally used to seeing- a box for search criteria and a box for soapmakingforum.com.

So far, so good, but here's what happened when I typed in my search criteria and clicked 'search' like I normally do: a page popped up with a big red X on it that said : "This content cannot be displayed in a frame. To help protect the security of information you enter into this website, the publisher of this content does not allow it to be displayed in a frame."

Goodness gracious!

Then right below that it says: "What you can try:", and then below that it gives you a clickable option that says, "Open this content in a new window". So, I clicked on that and a Google page popped up that gave me all my desired search results (finally!).

What a silly runaround that was!

My lighting fast mind shortly caught on (thank you DeeAnna) that you can just skip all of that silly, roundabout falderal and just go directly to Google and type in your search criteria, then type in "site" with a colon after it, and then type in soapmakingforum.com. For example, let's say you are searching for posts where DeeAnna talks about phenolphthalein. Type this into the Google bar:

DeeAnna phenolphthalein site:soapmakingforum.com


Then hit 'search'.

Ta-dah! And your search results pop up instantly, and without any weird ads or links to other sites. Yay!


IrishLass

 

[makemineirish]

Thank you so much for that. I am thrilled to know it was not just me and appreciate you going to the effort to work out a solution. It might make make sense to change the sticky instructions for new members.

 

[CaraBou]

Hmmm. No problem here. I have this link bookmarked, which keeps "soapmakingforum.com" in the site field, and leaves the term field blank. Is that what you've been using, or have you always had to fill in the site field?

 

[makemineirish]

Hmmm. No problem here. I have this link bookmarked, which keeps "soapmakingforum.com" in the site field, and leaves the term field blank. Is that what you've been using, or have you always had to fill in the site field?

That is the page that I have used in the past without any problems. However, when I try to use it now, no results (pertinent or not) appear in the blank area beneath the search fields. Instead, tangentially relevant products appear in the vertical ad space on the right.

My previous example was an attempted search for "Awapuhi" as I was interested in any reviews of the fragrance oil. In that instance, a number of Paul Mitchell hair products with Awapuhi were displayed in the ads. The space reserved for the search results remained blank.

I understand that you can navigate to the correct page using that link, but can you actually generate search results on it?

 

[ozarkscents]

It doesn't work for me any longer, either. I'm using Irishlass's suggestion.

 

[IrishLass]

Carabou- that's the same link I have, but it does not work the same for me anymore. I just now clicked on the link you supplied in this thread (just to be sure), typed 'hair' in the search box, and when I hit 'search', the big red X that says "can't open in a frame" popped up. Next, when I clicked the 'open in a new window' option, I got a 403 error page with a bunch of code written underneath. I tried again with 'glycerin' as my search criteria and the same thing happened.

Next I used Google and typed this in the box: hair site:soapmakingforum.com and it worked like a charm for me.

I went ahead and edited the info in our 'Search like a pro" stickies to give the Google instructions, but I left the Sitecomber link up in case it's still working for some.

I don't know if my browser has anything to do with it, but for what it's worth I use IE with Windows 7.


IrishLass