Integration with vBulletin - [Discontinued] YapMap Visual Search Custom Search Replacement

<font size="3">The YapMap Visual Search modification is no longer available. The YapMap search service has been discontinued until future notice.</font>

[Trevor Matthews]

Sounded good, right up until I read on your web-site that there are adverts next to the results!

[pianophase]

Originally Posted by Trevor Matthews

Sounded good, right up until I read on your web-site that there are adverts next to the results!

We actually don't show any ads right now. We're just hoping to get people to try out the tool. We simply reserve the right to show ads in the future.

Why? Because search is an expensive technical problem (we currently run systems combining more than 1 terabyte of RAM and 100 terabytes of redundant storage). At some point we have to make money to support our costs. If we do start showing ads, we'll split the advertising revenues similar to Google custom search. We would also let users know well ahead of time, if that time comes.

Thanks
Jacques

[kevdod]

One clarifying point on the advertising issue: if you do not advertise on your forum then you can install YapMap Site Search and we will not place ads on the search results.

As Jacques said, we are not currently running ads, but in the future our plan is to support the service through unobtrusive and relevant text ads next to the search results. When we do start running ads we will also share a portion of this revenue with the forum owner.

We think this new search technology can really help users find and explore content on forums. And by exploring more content they are generating more page views.

We built the system to support even the largest forums and it is an easy mod to install - we do all of the heavy lifting on our end!

Thanks, Kevin
YapMap Team

[Trevor Matthews]

Many thanks for taking the trouble to reply.

Unfortunately for me I run a small forum specifically for TV engineers, around 500 members at the moment. I thought this mod might be a help to them when searching. For some reason they always have trouble and never seem to find what they want despite me explaining * wildcard searches etc.....

I don't have adverts as such on the forum but I do offer paid options on the forum and that sort of thing. Perhaps you would look at www.television-magazine-forum.co.uk and from what you can see is that what you call advert free?

I appreciate what must be involved here and it has to be paid for but I know what the uproar would be like if I suddenly had adverts popping up and they would not possibly be relevant either to my members being a bit specialised.

Perhaps you might offer a paid for solution advert free at some point?

[Trevor Matthews]

When I visited your test sites I was taken straight to the YapMap search but after looking around the sites I couldn't find the YapMap search again. What did I miss????

[Trevor Matthews]

Forgot to ask, is this OK with VB 4.1.10?
I have no idea what 4.0.2 is

[kevdod]

Hi Trevor, we are fully compatible with 4.1.10 release. It is OK if you are a smaller forum - go ahead and install and we can sort it out. I will PM you with details.

The reason we built YapMap is to solve the problem you are talking about. Searching threaded discussions is a very difficult search problem and to solve it we had to create a whole new way to index and display search results.

[Trevor Matthews]

Thanks Kev
I received your email and will try installing the mod.

[Trevor Matthews]

All installed now.

I did have some trouble on your site when registering etc. It took considerable time and said connecting for 20-30 seconds and needed the save button pushing a few times before it connected.

I seem to remember reading that it was possible to install the yapmap search and leave the existing one in place, is that indeed possible.

I will await the email to say the site has been crawled.