The purpose of our site search is to assist visitors acquire the knowledge they need as efficiently as possible. Unlike internet search engines, we only have to serve results for our 'family' of sites. However, with more than 150,000 pages, this is still a complicated task, made even more challenging by the distributed authorship model that we live with. In order to do search better we should focus our efforts in four main areas:
Context: We need to know more about our users, both as groups and as individuals, and their needs. Only then can we please most people most of the time. This includes . The starting point (and easiest to do) is reflect the site location into the search experience. This would mean a different result layout (or even different results) for a user searching from 'Future Students' than one searching from 'Research'. Taking this further, we could the type of visitor (in broad groups based on their role/needs/purpose for visiting), location on our site, and preferences (explicit or implicit based on previous visits.Content: More content is not better, rather we need to work at relevancesuch as international/domestic) or their preferences (maybe by drawing on cookie information)..
Content: Search needs must feature in our content work (from strategy, through training and in writing) if we are to make real improvements to the relevance of search results. We must index and enrich the right content (not all of it), manage our recommend results, add promoted results for common queries (best bets), improve the visual catalog of the most important items (richer snippets), and eliminate junk from the default search experience.
Metadata: We need more and better structured information about our content in order to substantively improve search result relevancy.
UX: We need well researched, designed and built interfaces, with user feedback to enable continuous improvement. How come we don't ask where search found what the user was looking for? We should be continually gathering feedback, analysing, and refining our search experience and index.Look regularly at our top queries, abandoned queries and zero result queries.
Collections
Funnelback allows us to define collection, document/page/file groups with a common thread. We can then use these collections in search to better target and improve relevance, without having to micro-manage each document. For example, subject areas and UG degrees could be two collections, in turn grouped into a meta-collection 'UG study things'. We could search only over this metacollection on the KYM landing page or an UG study hub. So, combined with some site context information or a user-cookie value, we can improve relevancy without expensive content work.
Evaluation of search
Search fill its purpose when it deliver the right information, is fast about it and always available. To satisfy these requirements, the function of search is to be tested regularly and tests should be documented in test plans. Below are some of the tests that are appropriate:
- Search loads quickly, tested with Google Pagespeed Insights, with a minimum of 80/100.
- The response time of a query should be about 0.1 seconds, but never longer than 1 second, measured at the user interface.
- Search will be available 24/7 (around the clock seven days a week). Monitored by, for instance, Pingdom or Uptimerobot.
- Size of search indexes. Among other things, to see if more or fewer documents are indexed, which can provide warning signs in advance, help being proactive.
- Search’s user interfaces are accessible, tested with the W3C Validator.
- Search’s user interfaces are usable, tested against webbriktlinjer.seand W3C:s WCAG 2.0 at level AA.
- Survey the satisfaction of users.
- Reviewing search statistics and/or performing search analytics, to gain insight into how users are searching.
Insights
- We need to acknowledge site location/context for the search far, far more than presently, when most things default to a whole-of-site search.
- Collections are powerful, not only for grouping results, but also to power contextual searching.
- We need to internationalise more of the key pages, then use the key cookie settings to display the correct 'version'.
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