FurFinder FAQ

Welcome to the FurFinder FAQ, where you can find answers to the most common questions about the furry fandom's leading search engine.

What is FurFinder?
FurFinder is a search engine that uses its own spider to index pages from a list of known furry URLS; thus ensuring that results are relevant and spam-free. FurFinder began as an extention of Yiffy.Tk's functionality but eventually warranted its own site.
How do I get my site on the list?
The FurFinder spider takes its base list of URLs from the Yiffy.Tk Reviews database. The fastest way to get your site indexed to to register and submit your site for review.
I use a robots.txt file to block spiders like Googlebot, but I want to let FurFinder index my site. Is there a way to let FurFinder see my content without exposing it to everyone else?
Yes. The spider identifies itself as FurFinder - simply add the following lines to your robots.txt:
```
User-agent: FurFinder
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: register.php
```
Giving 'Disallow:' an empty value lets the spider index your whole site. Specifying a directory (note the leading and trailing slashes) restricts access to that directory and specifying a filename keeps a specific page from being indexed. You may use as many Disallow: declarations as you need, but you will need at least one for FurFinder to index your site if your robots.txt file contains
```
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
```
How much bandwidth does FurFinder use when it crawls my site?
Indexing takes up very little bandwidth. A complete copy of indexable files from your site (not all of them) - as someone who has no javascript might see it - is slowly downloaded. For static sites, this is often less than the size of the site on disk; for sites with dynamic content the amount of data is unpredictable. Every time your site is indexed, only files that have changed from the last pass will be downloaded again - ensuring your bandwidth is used as efficiently as possible.
How can I make FurFinder stop crawling my site?
Add the following lines to 'robots.txt' in the root (top level) directory of your domain. If the file does not exist, create it.
```
User-agent: FurFinder
Disallow: /
```
Keep in mind that doing this will make your site disappear from FurFinder after a while. If your site is in a subdirectory of a larger host, like furnation, you will need to ask your host to add your directory to their robots.txt file.
How can I improve the rank of my pages?
Follow these simple steps:
- Give your pages good <title>s - this is the most important factor in your page's rank. Titles should not be long, however - make sure they are concise and accurately describe the content in your documents.
- Use <meta> keywords and description tags
- Don't cheat! Not only will your pages automatically get a poor rank, if you become a nuisance your site may be banned from the index!
Can I put a search bar on my site?
You can copy and paste the code below to embed a FurFinder search bar like this into your site.
```
<form action="http://furfinder.net">
	<input type="text" name="q">
	<input type="submit" value="Search">
</form>
```
Why do I have to click on website snapshots to see them?
Making a thumbnail of a website requires loading the entire page and processing it. Making users click on the thumbnail to see it ensures that the fandom's webmasters' money isn't being wasted; you only have to load the thumbnails you want to see (especially important given FurFinder's non-policy on adult content) and that access to the fandom stays as fast and reliable as possible. Please note that generating the thumbnails usually takes a couple of seconds due to the amount of work involved; repeatedly clicking a thumbnail while it loads will not help it move any faster.
Why do I get 'Image Coming Soon' when I load a website snapshot?
This can happen for a number of reasons, the most common being that the website did not answer the thumbnail generator in time. This is not to say that the link is necessarily invalid; any number of factors can make sites or the thumbnail generator respond slowly and the thumbnail generator has a very short timemout by design. Usually clearing your cache and trying again or waiting a day will load the image.
I think FurFinder is just peachy. Do you have a button or banner I could throw on my site?

Please use the button above to link to FurFinder, your support is greatly appreciated!
I'd like to support FurFinder another way, do you take donations?
The webmaster gratefully accepts monetary donations of any size via PayPal, and hardware donations if they can be delivered or shipped without cost. You can find more information on donating to FurFinder on the Bad Karma Networks donations page.

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