Site search is one of the most useful tools in Web site promotion and marketing because once people start searching your site they are expressing the faith or hope that they will find what they are looking for on your site.
A good question to ask yourself on every Web site you design or enhance is: “How much content justifies a site search box?”
That really depends on what you are using for site search and how often it’s updated. Also, you may find that people use more than one site search method to navigate your site. Just because you include a site search box on your site doesn’t mean that people will use it. They may simply use a search engine to search your site.
How much content justifies a site search box depends more on how you organize your content than on how much content your site has. That is, a very large site with thousands of pages really should include a site search tool but it’s possible — through well-designed navigation — to teach your users how to get from one point on your site to another simply by manually changing URLs in their browsers.
Just because you don’t believe most people would do this doesn’t mean it’s an ineffective means of navigation or promoting your site. Helping people reduce the amount of time required to find what they are looking for should be your primary concern. If you embed navigation tips in your masthead or provide a little Javascript tool that uses metaphors (page names paired with actual URLs) or full URLs you may find that people enjoy using the alternative short-cuts you provide.
How much content justifies a site search box would be better asked as “how does a site search box help my users?”.
Site search can teach you many things about your Web site: how people see it, what they expect from it, what they know about it, and how they want to use your site.
Site search can also help you understand how major search engines work (and don’t work) because not all site searches are the same. The less content a site search tool indexes, the less often it indexes your changing content, the less likely your visitors will find what they are seeking. You may find that your search visibility is diminished rather than enhanced by site search because people can learn not to trust it.
It’s in your best interest to test site search on all the major search engines (as well as more than one third-party site search tool) to find the most cost-effective, timely, and comprehensive site search solution. If you have only 10 pages on your site, you may still need a site search simply because some of those pages contain 1,000 words or more.
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