I think it’s a great move by the Prosperent guys but it did break the URL rewriting which the plugin does if you choose to cloak your links. So if you are cloaking your affiliate links, download the latest version of the plugin now from the member’s download page..

So what’s new in this version?

Negative keywords

The keyword now supports the extendedQuery functionality of the Prosperent API. Basically this means you can now use things like negative words, which will enable you to get super targeted ads on your pages. I know that I had occasional issues with ads not being entirely relevant to the page, but with negative keywords I can easily exlcude them.

To use negative keywords just put a dash before any words you want to exclude. As an example, if I wanted to show ads for solar panels but I didn’t want to show ads for solar panel repair kits, I would use something like this;

[nmtk-prosperent keyword="solar panel -repair"]

Sorting and searching

You now have the option to show a “search” box and a “sort by” box above your ads. The search box can be really handy if one of your visitors doesn’t see exactly what they are looking for. All they do is type their search term into the box and the page will refresh with ads matching whatever words they typed. The sort box lets them sort the ads by relevance or price, just like with Google shopping results

There are a few new options on the plugin settings page too, including being able to set the sort order for the initial results returned by the Prosperent API. You’ve got a choice of relevance, price, or number of sales. You can also override this when you add the tag to your pages by using something like;

[nmtk-prosperent sort_by="sales DESC"]

which would be perfect for a featured product because it would show the product with the most number of sales first..

Merchant name

You now also have the option to show the merchant name along with all the other information for each product. Just tick the box on the plugin settings page under “Ad elements” and it will automatically show up in your ads.

Thumbnail images

There’s now an option to show thumbnail images, if they are available, instead of the full size product images. Smaller images will have your pages loading faster.

You’ll also notice a link on the plugin settings page to a quick guide. This will open in a popup window so you can keep it open as you add tags to your pages. It has the basic syntax, how to override the default settings, and examples of using advanced keyword and sorting syntax.

There are still more updates planned, but I wanted to get this version out so you could start using the extra features.

So let me know how you get on and what you think of it so far.. I’d love to hear some success stories..