Intranetizen IIC12: tips on intranet search

Editor's Notes

• #2: 8.8secI’m Sharon – I’m senior online comms manager at Standard Chartered Bank, and one-quarter of IntranetizenToday I’m talking about top tips for intranet search. So let’s hit the search button.
• #3: 13.0secPeople talk about Search Engine Optimisation as a ‘dark art’. It isn’t.Actually, it’s not that complicated: Good quality content on good pages performs better in search. Problem is, a lot of intranet content just doesn’t meet these basic criteria.
• #4: 13.1secIf your search doesn’t work, the most likely culprit is the content. Before you spend time and money making changes to the search engine, first look at whether your content is in the kind of state where it can be found by a search engine.The most effective way to improve search is to improve content.
• #5: 15.4secHow do you improve the content? Again, it’s not rocket science. There are just a few key areas to focus on.Does it have a unique title?Does the intro clearly summarise the content? Does it contain the right keywords?Has relevant metadata been added?If your content doesn’t have these, it won’t matter how good your search engine is.
• #6: 14.4secBut you can’t optimise every single page on your intranet on your own.It’s vital that those contributing content to an intranet understand the basics of SEO and what they need to do to make their pages findable.Before you let people loose on your CMS, give them some basic training on how to optimise their content.
• #7: 15.2secWe’ve all heard this, right? Here’s the rub: Google have spent fourteen years and many billions of dollars perfecting their search algorithm. Google holds an obscene amount of data on each and every one of us. They know your search history. All of it. Even the bit you don’t tell your wife about.
• #8: 12.2secContrast that with your enterprise search. I’m guessing most of us have search that looks more like this, right?Few have even one person responsible for search, or even spend time on search regularly. But there are some things we can all learn from Google.
• #9: 14.7secGoogle make something like 500 tweaks per year to their search algorithm. Meanwhile, most intranet managers don’t understand the search admin interface, if they’re even allowed near it. Maybe you have a bloke in IT who ‘looks after the search engine’.It’s time to get the keys to your search engine and take a look under the hood.
• #10: 14.9secSearch engines are not like Macs; they don’t “just work” straight out of the box.They need to be tweaked and trained in order to produce the most relevant result. Google succeedsbecause it does this constantly.  To get it working optimally, you’ll need a certain amount of fine tuning, looking particularly at:IndexingWeightingMetadata
• #11: There’s often a disconnect between the terminology used by specialists who create the content, and what people are searching for. Look out for this in search logs and add synonyms and acronyms to your back end so pages can be found using the search terms people are actually using. Again, a bit of effort is needed. Contact all business areas and ask them to send you a list of their most popular jargon.
• #12: Review search logs regularly; you’ll learn a lot – about where your search engine is failing, and about what your employees think of your company
• #13: 6.6secThe 80:20 rule applies here.The vast majority of searches are for a small number of things so focus on getting the right results for popular searches first, as this is where you’ll see the most benefit.
• #14: 14.7secIf you want to help people find what they want, it helps if you know what people want.What are your key user tasks? What are the key searches for those tasks? And does the right information come back when you run those searches?If you want to make search better, first understand where the problems are.
• #15: Popular searches are often seasonal. Watch for peaks in searching and promote relevant content to more visible spots when it’s being looked for regularly.
• #16: Which are the search terms that either return nothing? These tell you a lot.More to the point, they tell you, simply, that people are looking for stuff, and either you don’t provide it, or you do and your search doesn’t find it.
• #17: The average Google web search string now contains four words, but research shows users tend to use fewer words in enterprise searches. Less focused searching means less relevant results.Encourage users to use longer search strings by implementing autosuggest. This will produce more detailed search queries, and in turn more relevant results.
• #18: One of the reasons Google’s search is so good is that it’s personalised based on what it knows about you – location, search history, and so on.Internal users will be looking for different content based on their role, department, or location. Personalising results based on these improves relevance to searchers.
• #19: Google’s search page has but 15 words on it. People like this. User research consistently shows the simpler the search page, the higher the degree of user satisfaction. Users should be able to type their search term, hit a button and get some results. And understand those results.Allow users to refine that search afterwards, and leave any additional options to an Advanced Search option.
• #20: The design of the results page probably has the greatest impact on user satisfaction with search. It should enable the user to quickly identify which of the results is the one they’re looking for.This means stripping out unnecessary detail (such as last updated date), highlighting instead those things which give the user strong ‘information scent’, like title or site section. This will allow users to more quickly scan the page and pick out the right result.
• #21: Google has become synonymous with quality searching.  There’s some evidence to suggest satisfaction with search goes up if the search results are simply made to look more like Google’s, even if the actual results are the same. Make your page look like Google’s and people are more inclined to like it. Why do you think I’ve been using it for the past five minutes?