I was at the user group today (well actually it is yesterday now), Andrew Woodward gave a great presentation on Microsoft Search Server 2008. One of the questions he asked during the session was how many people reviewed and acted upon the statistics about what users were searching for. To my surprise only myself and one other admitted to this! Out of a room of 70ish people, most of whom had earlier admitted they had MOSS! 
I commonly hear from SharePoint users/admins that they can't find things using the SharePoint search. This used to be a common complaint in our organisation until.....
- Every week/month we evaluated what users were searching for and if we felt the results they were provided were satisfactory
- We setup a survey linked from the search results page, to allow users who couldn't find what they were looking for to tell us about it
Using the data from both of the above we were able to analyse where the search was failing to meet users' expectations. We found that:
55% The content was badly named, didn't contain the words the users was searching for, wasn't easily identifiable in search results (e.g. if you have 2 results both called Cafe - which is for London and which is for Manchester?)
30% The content users were looking for didn't exist
10% Users were using wide or strange search terms (why would somebody search for 'google' on the intranet? what exactly did they want to find when they searched for 'form'?)
5% Search wasn't finding appropriate content or ranking wasn't appropriate
So by appropriately authoring content and ensuring it exists to allow it to be found we solved 85% of the problem! That is a lot more satisfied users!
We also use the functionality that MS provide to allow you to influence the search - if you know that a specific page should be the top hit for a term make it a best bet. If something is known as something else - e.g. it has been renamed add it as a synonym.
Watch out for another blog article from me on how to influence the SharePoint search, in which I hope to cover Best bets, synonyms, authoritative sites, etc.
Posted
01-11-2008 12:50 AM
by
JennyE