Some of you may have noticed that I’ve changed the search boxes around a bit. We used to have two of them, and we still do. The upper left one was a search for Pennswoods.net Classifieds. As many of you have already discovered, it has been moved lower to the body of the classifieds, and more centrally located.

Shortly after making this change, one of my co-workers mentioned that the location of the search field made it appear that when you were inside a category, it would be a category-specific search. Unfortunately it was not category specific, but it is NOW! Thanks Curt!

The search in the upper right was a generic, search-for-anything google search bar in the upper right. That might have been really cool in 2001, but in 2011 it is a bit pointless. If you wantedto search for something, you’d just go to google or yahoo or where ever yourself and not need a search field on Pennswoods to do it. So this one was re-worked so that it searched google specifically for cached Pennswoods.net ads. I get a regular stream of requests for ads that have expired. Most of these requests just want to purchase something that was advertised in the past, but I cannot provide ads that are not currently on our website. I put a lot of effort into making sure google, yahoo, and other search engines index your ads, to reach the widest possible audience. This re-worked search bar can help you search google for those cached ads, which can be available through google much longer than they are available on Pennswoods.net. This re-worked search bar is now centered near the bottom of most pages.

I take pride in the fact that my friends, family, and co-workers find this to be a useful site. I hope that you have found these changes make it easier to buy, sell, and trade with your neighbors.

I’ll be in North East, PA on Oct 20. If you are in the area and you’d like to hear a brief talk on how to stay safe while shopping online, or if you’d like to share with me how you use the Pennswoods.net Classifieds, I’d love to meet you.

Chris