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I made the mistake of not saving a copy of what I had written, and Wikipedia deleted it within an hour for the reasons I showed before. It was not a very long article, maybe 3 or 4 sentences, just talking about how Search Kindly started and who started it and how it raises money for charities. I kept it unbiased, or at least I thought I did, and I even provided a few links to newspaper articles and links on Wikipedia that talk about stuff like that. It was meant to just be a stub, but I guess they thought it wasn't even good enough for a stub.

--Odd, does anyone know what it takes to get into Wikipedia? I know there is a brief mention of Search Kindly in another section on Wikipedia...philanthropist.--Syed

Chris from VA
Saturday, March 17, 2007 at 11:11:35 AM

to Chris... perhaps you could post what you have so far for the article here, and users like me can make specific suggestions for modification, because I think that would be easier than trying to give you a general suggestion on how to make something unbiased.

Stoney229 from MO
Saturday, March 17, 2007 at 2:02:23 AM

Now that you have the proof for the Pennies of Promise, you should update the Who We Support page, because it still says that you are waiting on the money from the ad companies. Also, on the Who We Support pages and others like them, the links on the sides say scroll down to read the recent blogs and comments, but they are in fact not down there. I guess change the wording on those particular pages, but keep the links, because those still work. Just a couple suggestions. I have been working on a Wikipedia article, but it is very difficult to keep everything unbiased and impartial. It says that "the article seems to be about a person, group of people, band, club, company, or web content, but it does not indicate how or why the subject is notable, that is, why an article about that subject should be included in Wikipedia." Any ideas to prove it is notable and that the information about the site should be there without sounding biased towards it?

--I'm going to have to chew on this one. By the way, I'll take care of those changes within the next day. Thanks for pointing them out.--Syed

Chris from VA
Friday, March 16, 2007 at 11:11:21 PM

So technically speaking, doesn't this mean that I can refresh the page a thousand times and in turn make the donations that way?

NO!!! Please don't do that. In theory it might make sense to do that, but in practice it will cause irreparable damage. We've already had a couple groups of people try to raise more money for Search Kindly by clicking and refreshing in ways that weren't in line with how they would normally use the site. What happened after they did that was we lost our Google AdSense account (and the money in it) and on the second push, the one with all of the refreshing, our current ad network temporarily disabled our account.
I know that your intentions are in the right place, so please don't take this the wrong way. Though they may appear as nothing more than a bunch of banner ads, there really is a lot of accountability in the system with account audits and everything. If you're interested in helping us raise as much money as possible, my request to you is to tell as many friends as you can about Search Kindly and link to us from as many places as you can think of. We even have a portable search box that you can pasted into places like MySpace and Blogger, if you like. Thanks again for your thoughts and interest.--Syed

Shawn from Illinois
Friday, March 16, 2007 at 12:12:36 PM

Alright it worked. Thanks!

Stoney229 from MO
Friday, March 16, 2007 at 11:11:40 AM

I just tried searching from my Search Kindly FireFox search bar and it only brought me to Google's results page (with the SK logo at the top) and never to SK's homepage.

--Apparently Firefox didn't automatically update itself on your macgine...could you try "add to searchbox" one more time and let me know how that turns out?--Syed

Stoney229 from MO
Friday, March 16, 2007 at 2:02:38 AM

So in the interest in full disclosure and to not seem dishonest or tricky you might consider adding back a message on the home page and on the search results page that says something like "No money is generated for nonprofits per search. Donations are generated from our homepage advertisements only." Again, it's very misleading as it currently stands. Thank you for considering this suggestion. I hope you will continue to post this on the comment wall.

--Hey Craig, I have absolutely no problem with posting your comments here. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, especially since all of you out there are the ones who are making this possible. As far as changing the little note on the results-page, well, the reason we changed it to what it is right now is because I had over a dozen emails from people asking me what it all meant. That's why we chose to just go with something simple.
We honestly don't mean to be misleading in anyway, and I don't think that most of our volunteers think we are, but if I get a bunch of emails urging me to make the change that you suggested, we'll run with it. Thanks for your comments.--Syed

Craig from Los Angeles
Thursday, March 15, 2007 at 8:08:19 PM

So no money is generated when people use Searchkindly from the search bar or through a banner ad on a nother website, right?

--Actually, that's not right. If you search from any of the search boxes--either the ones that are built into Internet Explorer, Firefox, or the one that you can copy from the site (the banner ads)--money is in fact donated. What happens in all of those cases (or at least it should be happening) is that you hit enter and then are taken to Search Kindly first. After hitting enter again, you are taken to the search results page. If Ramadev had not configured it so that you first come to Search Kindly, then you would be correct. But Ramadev is a very clever little booger, which is why it's so easy to search kindly from pretty much anywhere that you can imagine. Hopefully that clears things up.--Syed

Stoney229 from MO
Thursday, March 15, 2007 at 6:06:54 PM

You used to clearly state throughout the site that no money was generated per search, but that money was only earned for the nonprofits from the banner ads. I appreciated the upfront honesty. Why did you take this message down? It seems to be pretty misleading now without it.

--Thanks for bringing that to my attention. Was that really said throughout the site? Wow. Sorry, sometimes we change things so fast that I forget what was up in the first place. Please don't take the constant change as us being flaky, we're just experimenting with new ways of presenting information. But to answer your question...
Money is not generated by searching. But I think I am might have said in my last post that we make a cerain amount of money per search. Yeah, that really is confusing. The reason that I used the term "per search" is because it just makes for easier conversation, I guess. To be absolutely precise, we make money per pageview.
The way that we get paid is by every thousand impressions of advertisements that we show to our visitors. For example, that long banner on the left-side of the screen? On average, we make about 75-cents for every 1000 times that it is shown. That's fairly typical for flashy-graphical ads. The text ads that you see, on the other hand, we don't make anything for just showing them--people have to actually click on them for any kind of financial transaction to take place.
So back to your original concern. Yes, we raise money per visit and not by search. And yes, it is kind of confusing; I'll be more clear in the way I explain things in the future. Thanks again--Syed

Craig from Los Angeles
Thursday, March 15, 2007 at 3:03:49 PM

Thanks for your response to the ad thing - I can't remember what company it was, and it only happened once so hopefully it won't again. I'll let you know if it does, and pay attention to the company. I'm going to tell lots of people about this site!

Joanna from Grand Rapids
Thursday, March 15, 2007 at 12:12:40 PM

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