Good and Bad Use For An Internal Search Function

June 22nd, 2008

Internal Search Function What Is It Good For And Not Good For?

The surge of the 3 primary search engines have trained the user to want their information fast and with the least amount of upfront effort, yet some might say the accuracy of that information is less then optimal based off the algorithm that sorts it. But I pose the question, is the algorithm the bottle neck or is it the user’s expectation of the category and naming structure of the product that is at fault.

Internal search function is consistently playing a larger role with ecommerce sites that have a large number of products, or articles that fall into the long tail of their product set and will not be reached because of the complexity of presentation to the user. The search function gives the potential buyer the ability to find long tail items without searching through numerous pages of products, and it gives the website owner the freedom to focus their on site navigation on their primary products and keyword sets to guide the user through the site and show them the sites expectation of the naming and category structure of its product set.

Internal Search Function As Primary Navigation. (Probably Not)

Visitors to your site don’t know that they don’t know. Some sites use their internal search function as stand alone “navigation”, which in my opinion this is an overuse and a misuse of this powerful tool. How many times have you searched for something in an external search engine and not found what you were looking for? You would think with the millions of sites that one of them would have exactly what you were looking for. The reason you might not have found what you had set out to find was because your expectation of what object “x” is called or how it is categorized did not match the expectation of the web communities naming structure and with no guidance you were on an endless search for the light switch in the dark.

Using the search function as a primary navigation also forces visitors to search through pages of product to determine if the expectation of the term they searched for matches the presentation your site gives that product. Alternatively, if a user can follow a path of guidance to at category or section of your site that has similar product they can form a mental map of how your site represents the product they are searching for. Armed with this small bit of knowledge they can either take the initiative to look through the products the navigation has brought them to, or use the search function to more accurately match their product expectation with your product presentation.

For these reasons, sites that depend on an internal search function to run their internal navigation can hold more flaws with consumer usability and possibly life time value (LTV) of a customer due to poor accuracy of the result sets presented back to the consumer.

Using Internal Search To Generate Your Site Navigation.(Probably Not)

Matt Cutts wrote a few months back that sites should eliminate search results from being indexed using their robots.txt file by adding a disallow tag for these results. So sites that are using their internal search function to generate their navigation on the fly from the search result sets are going against Google’s best practices because it introduces search queries into the results set that is indexed and ranked by the search engines. This has the potential to pull the focus away from the pages that you really want indexed and ranked that have the highest ROI and conversion rate due to the thought that it gives the spiders more garbage choices and leaves it in their hands as to which to rank for your site. I don’t know about you, but I would rather guide the spiders to the pages I want indexed and ranked with no follow tags or using my robots.txt file to get my best pages in front of the consumer.

Data You Gather From The Search Queries Can Be Used For.(Probably)

Your internal search is a great way to gauge how the community is talking about the products you have, and what their actual expectations of a naming convention or category expectation should be for your site. You can also get insight into what new products they have the expectation of finding on your site. How do you listen to your community you’re your search function? Comb though your search results that pull back little or no relevant results and keep track of those over a month or two. This information can be used to learn the new lingo that is being used, find new products, customize an on site navigation that is more intuitive to your users needs, and allows you to gain insight into new keywords for your PPC or SEO campaigns.

What I think it should be used for, and if you have got this far I have a chance you might care about the next paragraph.

Internal search should be used as a compliment to your primary navigation which holds your primary keyword sets and gives guidance to the user. The internal search holds its most power if it is used to capture the long tail terms of your product set which enhances your sites usability and consumer friendliness.

Share and Enjoy: