General Questions

What is CyberSiteSearch?

CyberSiteSearch is a new and innovative on-demand Software as a Service (Saas) E-Commerce site search solution that integrates with your online marketing efforts.

Why should a merchant use CyberSiteSearch?

Because it helps online merchants increase their sales in several ways:

	It helps increase the site conversion rate by presenting the online merchant’s products with pictures, descriptions, stock status, etc. instead of boring text links.
	It permits merchants to promote and merchandize certain products in response to visitors search queries.
	It allows for up sell and cross sell product suggestions right from the search results page.
	It facilitates customer ordering directly from the search results page.
	It integrates with and is compatible with online marketing efforts.

What do you mean when you say CyberSiteSearch integrates with our online marketing?

It means that several product features address the visibility and indexing of your products by external search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask. See the related topics below for more information on these features.

What do you mean when you say your solution is “On Demand Software as a Service”?

We mean that all software and data bases reside on our servers, so there are no costly software licenses or hardware upgrades. All ongoing technical support is provided by our staff. The net effect is substantial savings for the online merchant as well as rapid deployment.

Why are product attributes important?

By making your products with their associated attributes available to your site visitors, they are far more likely to find exactly the right product to fit their needs.

Secondly, your products’ visibility to external search is significantly increased by associating attributes with products.

Product attributes are extremely important. We urge you to learn more.

How do you know about my products and their attributes?

Merchants send us a data feed that contains complete product information including their attributes.

Don’t products that spider my site see those product attributes too?

Well, they see them, but rarely understand them properly and fully.

Is there a limit to the number of products that you support?

No, there is no limit.

Questions Regarding Site Search:

My web host offers site search for free; why should I consider yours?

This type of site search is typically a free content search solution. That may be adequate if you sell content, but if you are selling things, an E-Commerce site search is vastly superior.

What’s the difference between E-Commerce search and content search?

Content search returns results as cryptic text links, while E-Commerce search returns products, complete with pictures, prices, availability descriptions, etc. Plus, it permits up sell, cross sell, promotions and merchandizing. Learn more about E-Commerce site search.

What do I need to add to my web pages to implement CyberSiteSearch?

Your webmaster need only change the search form on your site to point to our servers.

In what order are my products presented?

Your customers can view search results sorted by popularity, sale items, new products, and price. The default presentation is sorted by popularity so your best selling products are at the top of the search results, increasing the likelihood of making the sale!

What is a product locator?

A product locator is a function supported by CyberSiteSearch that allows your site visitors to precisely find those products that meet certain criteria. For example, a tea web site might implement a product locator that helps find teas by a combination of flavor or blend (e.g., English Breakfast), packaging (loose tea versus bags), size (e.g., 25 bags per box), manufacturer (e.g., Lipton), etc.

Can the format of the search results page be changed?

Yes, the format can be fully customized to meet your needs.

What do the site search reports tell me?

The reports are designed to not only tell you about site search activity, but also provide insight into visitor activity on your web site.  They describe what products visitors are looking for, what products they are finding and buying as well as what they are not finding on your site. They provide an invaluable source of intelligence to improve your E-Commerce business.

Questions Regarding Search Engine Product Visibility:

What do you mean when you say some of my products may be invisible to external search engines?

Search engine spiders follow links from one page to another. That’s how they know a particular page exists. If a link to a product page does not exist, an external search engine will never find it, since it would never even know that the page existed. Even worse, the product page may actually not truly exist if it is dynamically generated from your product data base based upon some user action. Either way, you lose because no external search engine will find it.

How does CyberSiteSearch increase the visibility of my product pages?

Using your product data, we generate four different product site maps so that each and every one of your products not only becomes visible, they become obvious to external search engines.

What is a site map?

A site map is a web page that lists other pages on the web site and links to each of them. This permits visitors and search engines to find these other pages.

What are these four product site maps?

They are 1) the Total Product Visibility Site Map, 2) the Manufacturer Information Site Map, 3) the Search Phrase Site Map, and 4) the XML Site Map. Each serves a slightly different purpose, while reinforcing the others.

What does the Total Product Visibility Site Map accomplish?

This map links to each and every one of your products using the product name as the link text. This is the simplest of the four maps.

How does the Manufacturer Information Map help my products’ visibility?

This map links to every product that has manufacturer and/or brand information associated with it. The link text incorporates manufacturer, brand, UPC, part number, and model number information, thereby making external search engine spiders aware that each of these pages has that information associated with it. These products become more likely to be found when someone searches for this product using that type of information.

How does the Product Visibility By Search Phrase Map help?

This map links to products using as the link text the actual search words and phrases that searchers on your site used to find the product. Each of these products become more likely to be found when someone performs a search using that same search phrase on an external search engine.

What does the XML Map do for me?

Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask have adopted a common XML Sitemap standard, which helps these search engines find and understand all of the pages on a web site. We generate an XML Sitemap that includes all of your product pages so that all of your products can be readily found by these search engines.

Do I need to install these map files on my server?

Yes. They should be installed on your site. If desired, CyberSiteSearch will automatically install them for you. You need do nothing.

Do I need to link to these maps?

Yes, we recommend that you link to all four maps from at least one page on your site.

Do I need to notify search engines about these maps? How do they find them?

Once the maps have been created and installed on your site, we notify (“ping”) each search engine that new maps are available. You need do nothing.

How do search engines know when I add new products or change existing ones?

As soon as you send the product data to us, we create new sitemaps and tell the search engines about them.

What do you mean when you say “Fire and forget sitemaps”?

We mean that every time that you send us a new data feed of your products, all of these sitemaps are automatically created and automatically installed on your server. Then we automatically notify the search engines that these new sitemaps exist so that they will visit your site to peruse them. In other words, just fire off your data feed to us and then forget about the details; we’ll take care of the rest. You need do nothing more.

If I subscribe to the Google Product Injection feature, I don’t need your Search Engine Product Visibility option, right?

Wrong. The Google Product Injection and Search Engine Product Visibility options are designed to complement and reinforce each other. We recommend that you subscribe to both.

Questions Regarding Google Product Injection:

What does the Google Product Injection feature accomplish?

The Google Product Injection feature allows you to actively tell Google about your web pages, your products, and your products’ attributes. This facilitates inclusion, better positioning, and enhanced visibility for searches performed in:

	Google
	Google Base
	Froogle Shopping Site

Do I need to manually submit to Google?

No. We automatically inject all your product data into Google. You need do nothing.

Google expires listings in 30 days; do I need to refresh my listings?

No. If we do not receive a new product feed from you within 30 days, we automatically “refresh” your listings on Google by re-injecting it with your your data. This is designed to prevent your listings being dropped by Google.

Do I need to do something with Google first?

Yes, you must first set up a free account with Google and register your site.

You talk about  “Fire and forget sitemaps”; does the same apply to the Google Product Injection option?

Yes. Just send us your data feed of products and we’ll automatically re-inject Google with that data. We’ll also periodically automatically “refresh” the data feed to help prevent your listings being dropped by Google. In other words, just fire off your data feed to us and then forget about the details; we’ll take care of the rest. You need do nothing more.

If Google already knows about my products because of the site maps you prepare I don’t need the Google Product Injection feature, right?

Wrong. The Google Product Injection and Search Engine Product Visibility options are designed to complement and reinforce each other. We recommend that you subscribe to both.

Questions Regarding Data Feeds:

What is a data feed?

A data feed is any file containing formatted data that is transferred between computers. In our case, data feed are comprised of a merchant’s product data in a format that is appropriate and convenient for the merchant.

Do I need to use a data feed with CyberSiteSearch?

Yes. A data feed is the method used by merchants to send us their data.

Other vendors just spider my site. Why do you require a data feed?

Because a data feed is the only sure way of fully understanding your products and all of their attributes. Spider based systems make a valiant try at it, but just don’t provide the reliability that is required.

How do I prepare a data feed?

In any manner that is convenient to you. It could be as simple as exporting an Excel spreadsheet to a tab delimited file or as complex as having a script dynamically prepare a file.

I already send product data feeds elsewhere; can you use them?

Yes, you can re-purpose an existing data feed. In fact, we have implemented data feed adapters that convert existing data feed to such popular destinations as Shopping.com, Shop.com, Shopzilla, Google, Yahoo, Price Garbber, Smarter.com, Become.com and others.

How do I send a data feed to CyberSiteSearch?

In any of three different fashions: 1) manually upload it using a browser interface (“HTTP Upload”), 2) upload it using FTP (“FTP Push”), or 3) place it in a pre-defined location on your server from which we will retrieve it every day (“FTP Pull”). Available options vary by plan.

How do I set up and configure my data feed in CyberSiteSearch?

Our setup wizard steps you through the process of “training” our system to understand your data feed’s format.

Questions Regarding Product Support:

What kind of support do you provide?

We provide complete technical support for the product, and will assist merchants to best utilize it.

How do I obtain  support?

Support is provided via forum, email, and phone. The specific types of support that are available vary by plan.

Questions Regarding Plans And Billing:

How much does this service cost?

It is priced at just pennies per product SKU per month. We even have a free version available.

Is there a set up fee?

No, there is no setup fee.

Is there a big upfront payment?

No. There is no big upfront payment. Paid accounts simply pay monthly in advance.

Is there a minimum time commitment?

No. Use the product month to month.

What’s the catch with the free plan?

There is no catch. Merchants subscribing to the free plan receive the same basic services as paying customers. Of course, we have to impose some limits to be practical, but the service offered is the “live” product, not just some demo.

Why do you offer the free plan?

Because it is the most effective way for us to encourage merchants to use this service.

If I sign up for the free plan, how do I know I won’t be charged?

We can’t charge you since we don’t ask for a credit card number when merchants sign up for the free plan.

Can I switch from free to another plan?

Yes. You can upgrade at any time.

Why do you price the product the way that you do?

Our experience showed an absolute dearth of products that were cost effective for small to medium sized Web merchants, so we decided to invent one. No big upfront costs that discriminate against smaller merchants. This pricing is designed to be fair to merchants of all sizes – you simply pay a small monthly amount per product SKU. Small merchants pay less. Large merchants pay more.

How often do you charge?

We charge your credit card monthly on the anniversary date of the account being opened. For example, if you start on the 7th of a month, you will be charged on the 7th of every subsequent month.

How do you charge me if the number of products changes?

The charge is computed based upon the maximum number of products during the month. If the number increases or decreases, we catch up with an additional charge or credit the following month.

What payment methods do you accept?

We accept American Express, Master Card, and Visa.