Matrix Group International

Tag: Site Search

  • A Good Site Search Requires an Investment of Time and Money

    A Good Site Search Requires an Investment of Time and Money

    I hear this a lot from prospects: Our website search sucks! It seems many organizations are in pain with search. Here’s the thing: a good site search requires an investment of time and money. This investment can be substantial and I think it’s worth it.

    In many ways, Google has spoiled us. Google is a free, powerful, really amazing, awesome, spot on search. “Why can’t I have a search like Google?,” ask many of my clients. Google used to license its search technology, but no more. So what’s an organization to do?

    There are many search options: free, open source, commercial, at all price points. Here at Matrix Group, we have developed expertise at implementing SearchBlox, Solr, Algolia, Zoom, WordPress and Sitefinity. 

    In our experience, a great site search involves:

    • Great technology
    • A good understanding of the desired search experience
    • Great data hygiene where pages have unique title tags, all content can be crawled, meta data is populated, etc.
    • Search analytics
    • Ongoing tweaks

    No search technology is fabulous out of the box, unless you were willing to pay $200K+ for Google, and even that’s no longer available, which is why you’ve got to invest in the steps listed above to have a great search. And yet I hear this time and time again:

    “Our site search sucks. We want and need a good search. An effective search is critical to my site’s success. But I’m not willing to invest staff on data hygiene, and money on good technology and services from a great vendor.”

    Yikes. What’s a vendor like us to do?

    Instead of thinking about how Google is free, think about how search is just as important to wayfinding as good navigation and user flows. And if that’s the case, shouldn’t you be spending at least as much on search as you do on information architecture, e.g., navigation review, wireframes and user testing?

    The next time you’re considering a website redesign, or remarking on how bad your site search is, think about the steps needed to have a great search and budget accordingly. If it’s a small site in WordPress, you won’t need to spend a lot of money to have a great search. But if you’re looking for a search that will index multiple sites, weight content according to your rules, display a members-only icon, support an advanced search and filtering of results, etc., etc., please, please budget accordingly.

  • How to Have a Really Great Search on Your Website

    How to Have a Really Great Search on Your Website

    We hear this a lot from people who manage websites and navigate websites, “the site search sucks!” So what can you do to make search not suck on your site?

    Here at Matrix Group, we believe a good site search is the result of many things:

    • Good search technology. There are many products on the market, from the free Google custom search, to the very pricey Google Search Appliance, to commercial products like SearchBlox and open source products like Solr and Lucene. Your vendor can help you navigate the products and find one that is right for you. We like SearchBlox and here’s my Director of Software Engineering on the many reasons why we prefer to implement SearchBlox these days.
    • Effective site search setup. I’m working with a client on a search project and here are just some of her organization’s requirements: she needs her search to index multiple websites, allow filtering of the results by category and source website, index members-only content, support featured results, and allow some content collections to be prioritized over others. A good search solution supports all of these requirements and more. A good search partner helps you develop effective requirements and can implement the solution properly.
    • Good, deep content. Our association and nonprofit clients rarely lack good content, but it is important to take stock of your content, archive what’s outdated or redundant, and keep only the best online. I ask clients to meet as an organization and come up with the topics that they want to be known for on the web, and then audit their content to see if they have ample content on that topic. For example, if I ran Worldchefs and I wanted my site to be known on the web as the place to go if you want to be a culinary chef, I would make sure we have the following types of content:
      • How to be a chef
      • The training you need to become a chef
      • How it takes to become a chef
      • Training for chefs
      • The qualities of a great chef
      • Are great chefs born or made?
      • Etc.
    • Good content preparation. It’s not enough to have good content. Your content has to be optimized for search. Here are some example of best practices: descriptive and unique title tags and H1 headlines on all pages, properties populated in PDF documents, all content available to be crawled, and categories populated and displayed on the page and in metadata.
    • A good understanding of what good search results look like. Sometimes, clients tell me their search sucks. So I ask them to give me examples of 20 searches that people conduct on their site and what great search results look like. If they can’t tell me, we work together to define it. Only then can we refine the search technology, weight the content, and customize the results for the best results.
    • Search analytics. How will you know that your site search is working (or not working?) if you don’t have good analytics? Did you even know that you can have search analytics? Here are some examples: you can track the volume of searches, the search terms being entered, the number of results, and so much more. If you have analytics, be sure to look regularly at what people are searching for and then conduct those searches yourself. Are the results what you expect and want visitors to see?

    My biggest concern with site search is that people complain a lot about it but organizations are rarely willing to invest the time and money to have a really great search. Search is undervalued in that way. I hope that with this post, more organizations understand what goes into having a really great search.

     

  • Why Every Organization Should Care About Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

    Why Every Organization Should Care About Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

    Internet search conceptEvery once in a while, a client or prospect will tell me their organization doesn’t care about search engine optimization (SEO). Why? I get these reasons:
    • The organization targets a very specific, very niche set of audiences.
    • The organization has a defined universe and they are largely known to the association and vice versa.
    • The organization doesn’t have e-commerce on the website so they don’t need to reach out a wide audience to make sales.
    Even if all of this is true, I say that EVERY organization should care about SEO because:
    • A huge number of people use Google (or another search engine of choice) to access a known website. We know this because when Google used to make search terms available, it was shocking to see that so many people type specific URLs into Google. Evidently, there are people who just always start with search without even realizing it.
    • Your target audiences may know your organization very well, but they may not know your URL off the top of their heads. So what they do? They Google for it. Again, looking at search terms tells us a whole lot of traffic comes from Google, from people who know the specific organization they seek.
    • Many, many people rely on Google to search a website because the internal site search sucks. During many user interviews, members tell us they use Google to find what they are looking for on a specific site because the site search wasn’t effective.
    • If your organization is a trade association, you may “know” all of your member companies, but new member company staff may not who are you and what your organization does.
    • No matter how good your marketing and how often you mail or email, the vast majority of your customers do not know everything your organization has to offer. For example, Suzie Smith attends your annual conference ever year but she doesn’t know that you also publish a certain publication on a specific topic, so what does she do? She Googles for it!
    If your website isn’t search-engine friendly because you think SEO doesn’t matter, I hope you’ll think again. Even people who know your organization still rely on Google to find your site and search your site. If Google can’t find your site and can’t index the content properly, you may be losing out on traffic from the very people you think are going directly to your site.
  • It’s Not About Search, It’s About Wayfinding

    It’s Not About Search, It’s About Wayfinding

    Man looking laptopOver the past year, I’ve had many, many clients call and meet with Matrix Group about site search issues. Clients complain that their search isn’t pulling up enough results, or it’s pulling too many, the formatting isn’t great, it doesn’t include protected content, yada, yada.

    I sat down with a client recently to discuss site search and quickly realized that it’s not really about search, it’s about wayfinding and all of our user interviews and user testing are bearing this out. Here’s what we have learned:

    Site Search is a Twin to Good Navigation.  Whenever we interview users or watch them during user testing sessions, we find that there are people who use navigation to find information and there are those who skip the navigation and quickly turn to search. We’re not sure why this is, but it points to the importance of having BOTH good navigation and site search on your website.

    Google Has Shaped Our Expectations About Search.  To be honest, most clients love Google and want their site search to be Google or work like Google. Trouble is, the Google Search Appliance is pricey and Google stopped selling the Google Mini last July 2012. So today we implement SearchBlox, the Google custom search, Zoom, Solr and MaxxCAT. If a client wants the ability to search by specific fields (e.g., date range, title, category) and allow filtering of the search results, Google doesn’t seem to be the right fit. We have found that there is no, one single search solution that works for all sites.

    Visitors Don’t Often Know What They Need. More and more, we find that visitors come to a website with a problem on a specific topic. For example, a VP of Government Affairs needs to know everything possible on an issue before Congress. She goes to her trade association website. She might use the site search but she gets 500 results and she’s overwhelmed. Or she goes to the Government Affairs website and learns what the organization is doing on the topic but she needs more background. What this VP really wants to know is: background info on the topic, the organization’s position on the topic, recent news, upcoming meetings and conference calls, some publications for sale, a committee on the topic, etc. A possible solution is to create dynamic topic pages that bring together everything that an organization has to offer on a topic. This can be done with a common taxonomy, web services and RSS feeds.

    Bottom line is this: good wayfinding on your site is a multi-faceted journey. It’s not just about site search,  so please explore the different ways that your visitors can find the information and services they seek.

    How about you? What have you done on your site to promote good wayfinding?

  • Carnegie Middle East Center Bilingual Web site

    Carnegie Middle East Center Bilingual Web site

    Matrix Group recently worked with Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to launch a bilingual Web site for the organization’s Middle East Center.  To communicate with its multilingual audience, Carnegie needed to enhance its Web site to provide content in both Arabic and English.

    Our work included:

    • An enhanced  Content Management System, allowing Center staff to post content in both Arabic and English
    • Incorporation of a filter in the site search to allow visitors to search by language
    • Web friendly display pages to account for right-to-left reading

    Visit the Carnegie Middle East Center Web site

  • Have You Googled Your Name Lately?

    Have You Googled Your Name Lately?

    Search the WebOne of the goals of the last redesign of the Matrix Group Web site was to make my bio more prominent in search engines. I had previously resisted putting any information about me on the Web site for a variety of reasons, but my new biz team reasoned that since I do a lot of speaking and writing, people will Google my name; when that happens, we want the Matrix Group Web site to pop-up on the first page, if not first on the list of results.

    I typed “joanna pineda” into Google tonight and this is what I found:

    • An interview that I did for The Washington Post back in 2003 is the number one result.  This makes sense, given The Post’s Google page rank.  Here’s a wikipedia page on how Google page rank works.
    • This blog, The Matrix Files, is the 3rd listing.  This is great, exactly what we wanted.  The blog strategy is working.
    • The About Joanna Pineda page on the Matrix Group Web site is the 4th listing.  Fabulous.

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  • Where Do Broken Web Pages Go? The Internet Library, Of Course

    Where Do Broken Web Pages Go? The Internet Library, Of Course

    Whitney Houston sings “Where do broken hearts go?” Me, I have often wondered what becomes of broken or lost Web pages — you know, the URLs that used to work but now display a 404 or file not found error. Are these pages deleted from the servers? Or have they just been unlinked? And what do I do if I really need the information and it’s now gone?

    You’ll be glad to know that there is a whole movement devoted to changing the content of the Internet from ephemera to artifacts. Internet libraries are springing up everywhere to catalog and preserve Web pages, images, even audio and video files.

    The largest (I think) Internet Library is the Internet Archive, a “nonprofit organization dedicated to building and maintaining a free and openly accessible online digital library, including an archive of Web.” The archive is a collection of snapshots of Web pages from the around the world, taken at various points in time. (more…)

  • Google Searches Amazon Better Than Amazon

    Google Searches Amazon Better Than Amazon

    Amazon.com is really lucky that Google.com indexes its content and then adds the fabulous Google search algorithms to searches.  In order to find something on Amazon.com, I had to find it on Google.com.

    My son begged me to purchase software based on the Dr. Seuss ABC Book. We had previously seen the program at the Apple Store.  Even though I have a Mac at home, CJ’s computer is a PC and I wanted the PC version for him.

    • So I went to Amazon.com and typed “dr. Seuss alphabet software.”  I got nothing. I tried “dr. seuss alphabet” and didn’t get any software.
    • I should have typed “dr. seuss ABC software” but somehow, I had alphabet on the brain.  It was late and my normally decent searching skills were not kicking in.
    • So I went to Google.com and typed “dr. Seuss alphabet software” and yes, you guessed it, Google found the product I wanted on Amazon.com; it was the second link.
    • Google’s legendary search algorithms did it again.  Alphabet got equated to ABC and I got what I needed.  I bet I’m not the only person who has gone to Google.com to find the content on another site.  If I wanted to, I could have asked Google to search for “dr. Seuss alphabet software” on the Amazon.com site by typing “dr. Seuss alphabet software site:amazon.com.”

    Lesson for all of us who build Web sites: make sure your site is visible to Google and other Internet search engines (more on that topic in another post).

  • You Call That a Site Search?

    A friend works for Levi Strauss, so I always ask for her opinion when buying jeans. I was looking for skinny jeans; she recommended a pair of 503 jeans. So I went to Levi.com, typed “503” and got nothing. I tried “levis 503” and got nothing. I typed “skinny jeans” and finally got some results, but nothing for 503 jeans.

    So I went to Amazon.com and typed “levis 503” and got a hit for 503 jeans, as well as other jeans. It turns out that 503 jeans are no longer being sold directly by Levis, but a few are still available from Amazon.

    The Levis site search missed an opportunity to:

    • tell me that 503 jeans are no longer being made
    • suggest similar jeans or jeans that succeeded 503 in the product line

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