SharePoint Saturday San Antonio - Why Intranet Search Sucks (and understanding what it takes to fix it)

Transcript

1. Why Intranet Search Sucks (and understanding what it takes to fix it) Virgil Carroll principal architect, high monkey
2. ABOUT ME ▪ From the great State of Alaska ▪ User Experience Aficionado ▪ Been building websites since 1998 ▪ Been building SharePoint since 2001 http://www.highmonkey.com/blog @vcmonkey CEO / Principal Human Solutions Architect EDUCATION Instructional Design – M.Ed Athletic Trainer – Certification Physical Education – BS CAREER ‘HATS’ WORN President/CEO Motivational Speaker Programmer/Developer Certified Athletic Trainer Adjunct Professor Instructional Designer INTERESTS The Steelers and Star Wars; There’s no better combo
3. A special thanks to the Sponsors of SharePoint Saturday 2017 Lunch Sponsor Lunch Sponsor Web Sponsor SharePoint Saturday 2017 is hosted by Thank you to the SASUG annual sponsors Location Sponsor Join us here for the SASUG\SATNUG meetings every 3rd Thursday of the month! Register at https://www.meetup.com/SATNUG/
4. Why search is so important
5. If your site is huge, people are going to use search to find stuff vs navigation (mostly) }
6. If your site architecture sucks, people are going to rely on search more.
7. How users think User asks question MAGIC HAPPENS User received answer The too-easy information seeking model }
8. Why doesn’t this work ▪ Users may not know what they are looking for ▪ User may not know the term to look for ▪ User may just want to explore
9. Sometimes you’re just looking for one answer (known-item) SEARCH PATTERNS
10. Sometimes you want to find everything SEARCH PATTERNS
11. Sometimes you want to investigate (exploratory) SEARCH PATTERNS
12. Sometimes you need to find it again (re-finding) SEARCH PATTERNS
13. 1. Search 2. View results 3. Use results to enhance search 4. Repeat until end result is found Berry Picking Model Search Patterns
14. 8 simple ways your intranet search sucks (and how to make it not)
15. Before we begin ▪ It takes TIME ▪ It takes UNDERSTANDING ▪ It takes PEOPLE
16. 1. It’s gonna Suck (your problem) Content is king, but your content is a question mark
17. } ▪ Search has to be an integral part of your intranet content strategy Make it Rock (our solution)
18. Weight your fields the way you want to ▪ Prioritize fields to affect results Example : ▪ Content 0-just searchable ▪ Content 1-weighted like title ▪ Content 7-weighted like body text Beware of unintended consequences QUICK TIP
19. 2. It’s gonna Suck Great search engines learn from their mistakes, why don’t you?
20. Make it Rock You use analytics for your website, why not for your intranet search?
21. 3. It’s gonna Suck It may be on the page, but your search doesn’t show it. }
22. Make it Rock Understand your content and make sure your search engine does to. }
23. Remove Lists, libraries and sites ▪ Show cleaner results, no one needs to fine a list ▪ Remove certain file Types QUICK TIP
24. 4. It’s gonna Suck You expect everyone to know how to spell
25. Make it Rock Implement a solid spelling and synonym strategy }
26. 5. It’s gonna Suck You think everyone knows your language
27. Make it Rock Use the language your consumers understand, not you ▪ Acronyms should die ( or at least be used correctly) ▪ Explain it like they are a child
28. 6. It’s gonna Suck } You think documents are content too
29. Make it Rock Clean up or out the content that is killing your search ▪ If you can’t clean out, you need to prioritize, tune or separate }
30. Decide what is more important, Finding documents or content ▪ Survey your users ▪ Look through your crawl ▪ Understand patterns QUICK TIP
31. 7. It’s gonna Suck SharePoint thinks it knows how people think
32. Make it Rock Order your metadata in the way people will actually use it ▪ If you have none to order, well….
33. 8. It’s gonna Suck Your structure is Less than structured }
34. ▪ Page layout best practices equals a search engine that understands you Make it Rock }
35. Questions Virgil Carroll principal architect, high monkey