Analytics: Measuring the Impact of Search
Quicker than you can say Sarbanes-Oxley, the enterprise search market has gone from serving a relatively quiet existence as a nice-to-have technology to playing a critical role in today's emerging information management solutions. The good news is this evolution has spawned rapid innovation, greater extensibility and a broader range of available solutions. The bad news is the landscape is muddier than ever, leaving customers with the difficult task of making sense of the market and its players.
Aside from standard time-to-market and pricing variables, organizations are now entertaining additional key considerations when evaluating enterprise search. It isn't uncommon to hear, "Okay, I found my documents. What else can you do for me?" In other words, customers are expecting more from their search investments, looking to vendors to deliver greater value and a higher level of proactive knowledge management capabilities.
Beyond Search
Although not as pervasive among enterprise search technology as one might think, search analytics serves as one way the industry is helping deliver greater value to its customers. Whereas a Web analytics software package tells you how your visitors navigate your site, search analytics offers clear reporting on what these users actually search for, what they find and don't find and the trends in their search behavior.
Consider some sample reports that search analytics delivers:
• Most popular searches over a given period of time;
• Top searches with no results found;
• Searches with no results viewed;
• Top ascending and descending searches; and
• Search volume (peak and quiet times).
The benefits of search analytics are broad in appeal, yet few businesses are fully leveraging this valuable insight. Consider the potential ramifications of tapping such a tool across several professions in an organization:
Content managers. A primary goal of content management is to optimize the structure of information to ensure higher quality classification and retrieval. Analytics plays a vital role in directing content managers to deficiencies in their content. It does this by highlighting searches that yield no result views, thus prompting these professionals to either tweak metadata or create new content to better satisfy a user's expressed interest.
Administrators and Webmasters. Standard reporting features also illustrate top searches that produce no results. Often, these stem from incorrect spelling or variations in word choice. By analyzing these occurrences, administrators can opt to create custom synonyms to establish an association between what users enter and what the company presents as standard terminology.
Marketers and merchandisers. One of the challenges in both marketing and merchandising is anticipating what customers want and addressing those needs at the most critical time. By monitoring ascending and descending trends in search terms, marketers and merchandisers can construct campaigns and promotions designed to capitalize on hot trends or resurrect interest in a waning topic. Additionally, by simply viewing a list of top searches, these individuals can use this insight as keyword fodder for pay-per-click advertising programs like Google AdWords.
Executive management. Strategic decisions require considerable quantifiable data. Search analytics supplies this information to management, giving them valuable insight into customer wants and needs. More importantly, these wishes are expressed in a customer's own words, leaving little question as to the demands and direction of a target market.
It goes without saying that the value inherent in search analytics isn't confined to public Websites. An organization can apply these tools to all of their online properties, from corporate intranets to partner portals and extranets. Without this insight, the impact and effectiveness of an enterprise search solution can never be fully measured or optimized.
Established in 1988, ISYS Search Software (
www.isys-search.com) is a global supplier of enterprise search solutions for business and government. The company's award-winning software suite offers a broad range of products designed for searching desktops, networks, Websites, intranets and custom applications. ISYS has been deployed by thousands of organizations operating in a variety of industries, including government, legal, law enforcement, financial services, healthcare and recruitment.
ISYS SearchTrends serves as a core component of the ISYS:web 7 search solution for Websites, intranets, portals and custom Web applications. Providing out-of-the-box, browser-based reporting capabilities, ISYS SearchTrends delivers detailed insight into user behavior, search trends and patterns and overall search activity. Through this functionality, organizations and their employees can extend the value of their enterprise search solution by applying the insight gained to their everyday work lives.