eMedia Daily

An Inside Look at Internal Search

If you’re focusing on external search engines, you’re missing a huge opportunity with your existing audience. If someone is already on your site, do you really want to force them to use an external search engine, and take the chance that they’ll find a competitor’s site higher in the rankings? Especially important for eCommerce sites, internal search keeps your audience right where you want them… on your pages.

In “Inside look at internal search with Semphonic’s Gary Angel,” Gary Angel discusses what internal search performance is, and why it is important.

The following is from the article posted on DM News. We apologize for any errors or omissions.

What is internal search performance?

Internal search is the tool on your Web site that allows visitors to find relevant pages using keywords. The performance of your internal search is a function of how well your tool does this job. This is typically measured by the effectiveness of search in moving visitors to relevant content or into conversion paths.

How does it work?

Search works by indexing all of the pages on your Web site. When a user enters a keyword, your internal search engine returns the documents that most closely match the keyword. Because internal search tools are an essential element of a site’s performance, using Web analytics to measure their performance can produce significant improvements in overall site efficiency.

Why is there a need for such a tool?

For large sites, finding content can be onerous without an internal search function. Optimization of that function is essential, because even the best internal search engines will not always present the most effective content. In addition, there are numerous ways to use search behavior to better understand visitor intentions and optimization opportunities.

Have clients seen good results after optimizing their internal search?

The biggest positive results to internal search optimization typically come from the addition of tailored search results. However, each of the optimization techniques discussed including optimization of access, failed searches and routing performance have sometimes yielded significant overall site improvement.