SearchImprove’s statistics feature is an indispensable tool to discover what users search for and expect to find when they make use of the website.
Development of website usability requires knowledge of user behaviour. Knowledge of user search patterns is fundamental in order to configure a search engine to return useful results. SearchImprove’s statistics feature contributes valuable information about how users search, and what results they receive. This information can be used to evaluate and improve the quality of search results, and to adjust site content to reflect the interests of its users.
Developing knowledge: How does it work?
SearchImprove’s statistics feature logs detailed information about user searches. As a result, user search patterns are gradually uncovered, successful searches as well as failed searches. With this knowledge at hand, the organisation is in a better position to meet the search needs of the user, with the help of SearchImprove’s other features, such as the Thesaurus feature, the standard ranking options, and the page rank engineering feature.
SearchImprove creates a log of all searches with information about time, search term, hits, and search criteria. This information is gathered over a given period of time, adjustable to reflect the number of site users.
The statistics include information about how many times the users need to scroll in order to find useful results. In this manner the statistics provide information about whether the most useful documents occur high up on the list of hits, or whether the user needs to scroll further down the list to find anything useful.
The statistics are accessed through SearchImprove’s web based administrative interface, which is clearly presented and easy to use. They provide an overview of how users search, which search terms they use, and what they expect to find.
This knowledge not only allows you to tweak the search engine to return the documents that users need; it can also be used to develop site content and structure to reflect the interests and expectations of your users.
Expose your website’s strong points
The knowledge you gather from SearchImprove’s statistics can be used to expose pages of the website that the organisation uses as focal points for its service efforts. These may include profile pages such as main product pages, or overview pages that display the options available within the user’s field of interest. The statistics feature also provides ideas as to which search terms to choose for use with SearchImprove’s page rank engineering feature.