FYI, Felicia. Pertains to the question of saved searches. Judy
-----Original Message----- From: mcn-l-bounces at mcn.edu [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of j trant Sent: Friday, March 28, 2008 11:07 AM To: Museum Computer Network Listserv Subject: Re: [MCN-L] Effects of Google's 'search within site'? Anyone else affected? Frankie, You've done more than a lot of people have done in looking at your search logs. When i looked at the Guggenheims's -- as a prototype for some steve data analysis -- i did a literature search and couldn't find any serious studies of museum searching [this really surprised me, btw.] Each collection is likely to have its own patterns: in this modern art museum 63% of the most common searches (searched 10 or more times) were for artists' names. Amazingly about 25% of the searches of this collection produced no result [in an age of millions of results elsewhere, this is a real problem]. Looking at the search failures: - 36% were caused by spelling errors, so "did you mean..." would really help. - 50% of the unsuccessful artist name searches were caused by spelling errors. The paper, and a blog post with more detail, are at http://conference.archimuse.com/blog/jtrant/searching_museum_collections _on_line_what_do_peo Since search is a favourite navigation mechanism we really do need to pay more attention to it, both on and now off museum sites. /jt At 3:46 PM +0000 3/28/08, frankie roberto wrote: > > The most likely impact for us is in upcoming modifications to our > own >> search. > >... > >> Do we give up, and acknowledge >> that doing search in any way different from Google is a) now competing more >> directly with them, and b) probably just getting more confusing for most >> visitors; or do we focus on these (probably fewer and fewer) visitors who >> come to our search expecting it to work just the way it should, not the way >> that's easiest? > >Hmm, very interesting point. > >I'm sure I'm not alone in saying that we spend far far less time >looking at our search interface than we ought to. Our site search is >powered by a Google Mini, and other than providing thumbnails object >pages returned, it's pretty much working in its out-of-the-box >configuration. We haven't invested any time in editorially 'promoting' >results for certain search terms, for instance, or in setting up >synonyms. > >In fact, this discussion has prompted me to do a quick report of the >most popular search terms, which are: > >1. games - 1,1012 >2. grain strain (old game) - 498 >3. jobs - 488 >4. wroughton (object storage site) - 474 5. search - 447 (amusing this >is the default search text, so represents people pressing search >without typing anything) 6. launchball - 280 7. opening times - 252 >(shockingly, this doesn't return anything hugely useful, and so 11% try >refining their search) 8. bbc micro - 202 (in the news recently, but >only returns press releases) 9. builder - 192 (no idea what this is >about) 10. energy - 150 (presumably teachers looking for energy >microsite) > >This data is for the last month, and was gathered by the excellent >'site serch' function which can be set up in Google Analytics (which >allows you to monitor search terms, regardless of which search >technology you use). > >Generally, I site search seems to be hugely neglected by website owners >(mea culpa), which is presumably why people are turning to Google more >and more. > >Frankie >_______________________________________________ >You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the listserv of the Museum >Computer Network (http://www.mcn.edu) > >To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l at mcn.edu > >To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit: >http://toronto.mediatrope.com/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l -- __________ J. Trant jtrant at archimuse.com Partner & Principal Consultant phone: +1 416 691 2516 Archives & Museum Informatics fax: +1 416 352 6025 158 Lee Ave, Toronto Ontario M4E 2P3 Canada http://www.archimuse.com __________ _______________________________________________ You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the listserv of the Museum Computer Network (http://www.mcn.edu) To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l at mcn.edu To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit: http://toronto.mediatrope.com/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l
