Do You Care What The Search Data Says?

Sep 27, 2006 - 7:01 pm 0 by

Or maybe I should change that to "Did you know that site search data has a story to tell?"

I found it interesting that there may be a lack of education on the part of SEO/M's, site designers, programmers and site owners (okay, all of us), on the value of website search. I'd come across a search analytics survey by Lou Rosenfeld and Rich Wiggins and decided to present it for discussion in What are the barriers to taking advantage of search analytics?

The reported verbatim answers to the survey on search analytics fascinated me, and so has the resulting conversation in the forum. Seems as though there's room for education on site search and its value, for those who offer site-wide searches. There are also tools that tell you what people are searching for that led to your site, but not much support on what you actually do with that information.

Every search phrase has a story. The survey supports the theory that there are "barriers" to "taking advantage of search analytics." Ammon Johns wrote:

"There were thousands of searches per day made, and trust me that the long tail was very visible.
It's clear, from the comments at Cre8asiteforums, that there are those who are fiddling with the data as best they can figure, and many more who don't know what to do with this pony.

 

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