Sensible Searching: Making Search Engines Work

Dr Shaun Ryan

CEO

S.L.I. Systemshttp://www.sli-systems.com/

Overview1. Query usability – making it easy to search

2. Search results presentation – presenting the right information

3. Improving relevance – how to put the best result at the top

Query usability• The search box

• Where to have advanced search features

• Controlling the scope of a search

Query usability: the search boxShould be:

• Easy to find – suggest top right

• On every page possible

• A box not a link

• Large enough to type most queries

• Large enough font

Query usability: example Inside NBC

Query usability: advanced search• Don’t put advance features on the normal

search box.• Link to advanced search page from

– Search results – Near search box– No results page

• Page will help you – Choose scope (sources, products, dates, etc) – Construct Boolean queries– Select presentation options

• Ideally can remember preferences

Query usability: scope• Suggest search everything by default

• On search results page indicate what was searched and give easy options to refine or expand search.

Example from VERITAS1 - 10 of 6514 results for exchange within Knowledge Base, Support PDF Documents & News Groups

1 - 10 of 592 results for exchange within Knowledge Base (search the whole support site)

Search results presentation

• Incorporate company branding

• What to show and what not to show

• Search suggestions

• How should the results be ordered?

Presentation: Branding

• Incorporate company branding and standard navigation on the search results page

• Search results page is one of the most viewed pages

• Do not use the default look and feel of your search engine

Presentation: What to show

• Show enough to make a decision

• Do not show:– Relevance indicators– Date– File size– URL

• Show titles and descriptions maybe category, related searches, image.

Presentation: Bad example

Presentation: Good example

Presentation: Search Suggestions• Clickable related search terms

• Help refine search

• 25% of searches come from search suggestion clicks – are very useful

Presentation: Ordering

• Put most relevant result at the top

• Don’t categorize

• Can have options to change order

Improving relevance

Very important – improves productivity• Ways of measuring relevance• Good titles and descriptions• Using No Index tags• Using click through information• Using search reports

Click throughs/ Searches (%)

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

18-0

3-02

01-0

4-02

15-0

4-02

29-0

4-02

13-0

5-02

27-0

5-02

10-0

6-02

24-0

6-02

08-0

7-02

22-0

7-02

05-0

8-02

19-0

8-02

02-0

9-02

16-0

9-02

30-0

9-02

14-1

0-02

Date

%

Measuring relevance

Measuring relevance

Improving Relevance:Titles and Descriptions

• Give every page on your site relevant title and description meta tags

• Give more weight to titles and descriptions

• Improves relevance, increases decision speed

• Can use intelligent indexing if fixing your site is too much

Improving Relevance:No index tags

• <noindex> navigation </noindex> - tells your indexer to ignore part of a page

• Normally header/footer/navigation elements.

• Only relevant content indexed

• Descriptions shown in search results have relevant content

Improving Relevance:Using click throughs

• Put the results people click on most at the top

• Uses the intelligence of your employees to continuously improve the search results

• Improves relevance metrics

• Works best when there are lots of people searching

Improving Relevance: using search statistics

• A lot of useful information

Summary

Simple techniques make huge difference to the quality of your search experience

• Make it easy to search

• Make it easy to evaluate the search results with clear presentation

• Make the results as relevant as possible

Shaun Ryan

1 866 240 2812

shaun.ryan@sli-systems.com