What are the benefits of custom search?
Search engines have always played a significant role in directing traffic to websites across the internet. However, websites are getting bigger, acting as the home to a wealth of knowledge and content. It is now very popular for websites to adopt a search engine for their own site. This is beneficial as it makes it easier for visitors to find what they're looking for. This is known in the industry as custom search.
Most custom search engines are easy to customise and equally as easy to implement into your site. Although implementing it into your own website might cost you an annual fee, they are something that should be considered. It might cost you around $100 per year, but it can have a significant impact on the amount of sales your site makes. This is mainly due to the fact that the information and pages will become considerably easier to find and navigate.
Although you may think that you have a perfectly good site navigation system already implemented into your website, you just can't predict what a user will require.
There may be a specific page on your site that a user just cannot access from your standard site navigation bar. However, with a custom search engine they will be able to perform this search and find this page. If the site has been set up and optimised correctly, the visitor should be able to find the webpage easily.
Content that has been archived is also much easier for users to find, as well as being easier for you to reference in any site audits that you carry out.
Many custom search engines will allow the owner of the site to access data based on the most popular search queries and the frequency with which searches are conducted. This information can then subsequently be used to tweak and alter those pages on your site that aren't performing as well as those that are.
There are solutions out there that can eliminate this feature, as this may cause irritation and frustration to visitors.
As well as containing html web pages in the SERP many also feature audio and visual content, as well as PDF, .doc and .ppt files. This feature is especially useful for educational websites or sites that feature a large amount of data-based pages.
Like most services, there are those out there that provide a much more comprehensive and superior service, these providers should ideally be your first port of call.
Despite the fact that many service providers will be able to offer custom search services at a much lower rate. This will probably come at a cost to your site most notably in the relevancy of the search produced.
Remember, it will be one of the primary ways in which visitors navigate your site. If the results produced aren't relevant, it is likely that they will become frustrated and look for another similar site instead.
Posted by Glenn J Tucker on Sat, 5 Nov 2011 in Web Development
Glenn Tucker - increase conversion rates, sales and overall useability.
Internet Marketing at http://www.internetmarketingacts.com
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