We’ve begun implementing a new feature for the search results page on the website. This new feature will deliver Featured Results (much like paid-advertising results) at the top of the search page for a specific term.
The problem:
- Our search results are sorted by relevance. That relevance is determined via a database fulltext search. What this means is that the result is given more relevance to a search term based on how often that term is included in the content on the page, the ratio of number of occurrences of the search term to the number of words in the text, and where within the text the term occurs [terms closer to the beginning of the text have more relevance than terms towards the end of the text].
- Some pages are extremely relevant to a specific search term, however would not show up at the top of results pages for various reasons; most notably that the specific term was not included very often in the text.
The solution:
- Have a specific page linked to a specific search term and show those results first in the search results.
An example:
- A search on the website for the search term ‘dean’ would initially show 19 results. A user would expect the first results to be specific pages regarding the Dean of the College. However, the first results were pages that included the word ‘dean’ within the text a number of times and not specifically relevant to the Dean of the College. Those pages were deemed to be more relevant because the word ‘dean’ was included more times in that page rather than in the specific pages regarding Dean Smith.
- We’ve included the search term ‘dean’ in the featured results. Now, we control what pages are shown first in the results, with the regular organic results shown below. Below is a screen shot or take a look: http://education.ou.edu/search/?q=dean&start=0
Implementation:
- We’ve only included a very few featured results so far. We will begin going through the pages on the website to determine which, if any, terms would be used to feature that page.
- This is a time consuming process, so we won’t have all pages featured initially. However, we will work diligently to get this completed.
- Of course, you know your content better than we do. So if you have requests to have a specific search term feature a specific page, please send them to educationinformation@ou.edu.
We will continue looking for ways to improve the user experience on the website. As always, if you have any ideas please send them to me at swatkins@ou.edu.
Add A Comment