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Can I search your site?
Written by Tyme White on October 6, 2006
Have you ever wanted to find an article you once read? You know:
1. The site it is on
2. The subject matter
3. You might even remember part of the title
You go to the site and groan, because you do not remember when it was written and the site doesn’t have a search feature. You click on the tag you would put the article under but guess what? It’s not there. You think about Googling it, but you decide in your frustrated state you aren’t that interested. You go on with your day. If you’re a writer, you link to another article.
Content management systems for the most part makes it very easy to add a search to your site. You tell me, if you don’t have one, why?
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October 6th, 2006 at 9:27 am
Good point. I was so dumb because I realized my CSS was hiding my search bar behind my header. It took three months to realize it until I had to actually search for something, myself.
I’d recommend Search Meter for Wordpress so you can monitor what people are looking for and then, perhaps, create a ‘featured’ or ‘popular’ articles section.
October 6th, 2006 at 9:51 am
i had a search for a long time. but google works better…i figured people just used that. perhaps i will add it back.
October 6th, 2006 at 9:52 am
Whoops.
October 6th, 2006 at 10:10 am
I’ve had that happen to me. Except I’m crazy and kept on browsing the archives until I found what I was looking for.
I don’t think I would do it again though.
October 6th, 2006 at 10:59 am
I don’t have a “search” feature enabled on my site because I already have other things like categories, archives, recent comments… and there’s a lot in the sidebar. I just don’t like things that are cluttered.
October 6th, 2006 at 11:11 am
cristinamarie: look at the criteria I said the person knew, which is common. So essentially you’re saying:
1) I have to guess the tag you put it under and page through your site.
2) I have to guess the category you put it under and page through
3) If it wasn’t recent how does that help me find what I’m looking for?
4) How does the calendar help a reader find what they are looking for?
Bottom line: I have to leave your site to find something on your site unless I want to waste my time paging through your site to find something.
But it’s good you don’t have extra clutter.
October 6th, 2006 at 12:16 pm
I am guilty. My reasoning: pure slackness. I keep meaning to put it in there, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. I know…I suck.
October 6th, 2006 at 12:22 pm
I am a big fan of the search feature- with entries on my site dating back to 1998, even I couldn’t find what I was looking for without search!
I had never heard of that “search meter” though- I’m going to check that out. Thanks for the tip Devin.
October 6th, 2006 at 12:54 pm
[Runs off to add search bar on all sites being submitted.]
October 6th, 2006 at 1:11 pm
Search is very important. The only search my site has is for my wordpress but I am working on extending the search engine to include content from everywhere on my site. This includes my art and all that.
October 6th, 2006 at 1:49 pm
Christina Marie:
A search bar above your calendar would add very little clutter. Seriously. What I can’t stand more than this, is when posts are named badly. If it’s named totally pointlessly, then you still have to go rooting through the categories.
October 6th, 2006 at 1:59 pm
Yes, no search functionality drives me nuts. I hate searching by category, and I rarely have a small enough date range in mind to make monthly archiving helpful.
@christinamarie: If you’re worried about clutter, get rid of the other crap and just have a search box.
*cough*Rundle*cough*
October 6th, 2006 at 2:03 pm
Search bar?
In the next version.
Besides, all my readers just know where the stuff is.
No need to search.
Not at all.
Nope.
No need.
October 6th, 2006 at 2:40 pm
I plan to put every single entry on one page. They can use their browser’s search feature. Once the page finishes loading the next day.
October 6th, 2006 at 3:26 pm
The search is there, just through wordpress though, considering to add a google search for the rest of the site in to it, would be fun to combine WordPress search results and results through the Google API.
October 6th, 2006 at 4:10 pm
Yes, I’ve been meaning to put one on if Typepad allows it. When I redecorate the site within the month I’ll be sure to add one in. I’m the one usually hunting through my own 3,500 plus entries to find something.
October 6th, 2006 at 4:44 pm
I have one, but I didn’t really know why so far. I thought everybody knows the “Search current site” function of the Google bar.
Now I know. And since I don’t use calendar and categories….
Thanks.
Good question.
October 6th, 2006 at 5:26 pm
I started tracking my local searches and was surprised to find that a lot of people really do use my search to find things. Since then I’ve made it a much more accessible part of the design and plan to continue the trend when I redesign shortly.
October 6th, 2006 at 6:28 pm
When people search my site, it’s through Google. As much as I hate using an interface that doesn’t look exactly like my own, people are so much more used to the way Google’s search engine functions.
I’ve found that with the built-in WP engine, it’s not always too intuitive; sometimes it pulls up the most random crap in my experience. So I switched to using Google, and I’ve gotten a few emails of thanks for it surprisingly. Apparently one person had been trying to find something on my site, to no avail, even with the WP search feature, only to be able to find it with ease when I switched to Google’s site search. Don’t ask me why she didn’t just email me before…
October 6th, 2006 at 6:56 pm
One of the Worst Mistake a guy can commit is by putting up a Adsense Search Box his blog… ugly ..
October 6th, 2006 at 10:03 pm
I tried using the “search” feature on my site and… but oh well.
October 6th, 2006 at 10:27 pm
While google’s search technology is arguably the most commonly used search platform, people in my experience do know how to enter a keyword, or words, or even phrase and hit a button.
I’m doing it right now in the form of a comment.
I use the built in wordpress search, but I also search pages something that even google doesn’t always bother to index.
A number of my visitors arrive from both google searches and other articles - which is a-ok by me. But, when they arrive I give them visual queues via the very obvious search box.
I’m in the process of looking at how best to incorporate a tag-cloud on the front page (it’s already in the site chronology) so folks can go nuts ‘tag diving’ - something I like to do myself.
October 7th, 2006 at 10:33 pm
The ability to find information on your site is a usability issue. It’s about respect for your users. It’s worth the time and trouble to figure out every method possible to get a user to the information they’re after. That will translate into repeat visitors, basic SEO, and quotable material.
The search box is basic to almost every WordPress theme. Unfortunately, it only searches posts. The SearchEverything plugin opens up pages and even comments to search as well which I think is an awesome feature. Lorelle also wrote an interesting article back in April about how the default search box allows other sites to link directly into your search results and get “articles specifically related to the topic at hand.”
I prefer the clean results of a site index to a tag cloud, though I now provide both for users. A site index allows you to not only showcase every single subject you’ve written about but provide a feed link for it as well. That ability to receive highly-focused content from your blog (as opposed to all of it) makes you a resource for users who don’t have time (and therefore won’t read) what you write about in general.
Take the time for your users, and they’ll take the time for you.
October 8th, 2006 at 6:07 am
Oops, that should have been the SearchAll plugin, not SearchEverything.
October 8th, 2006 at 10:16 am
holy moly … having search is such a big deal.
I lost some time the other day looking through someones archives using safari ‘find’ to get to an article they wrote a few months ago.
This makes me think of custom 404 pages too.
October 8th, 2006 at 11:50 am
Although I have a search form on my own blog, when I go to other sites I use my Google toolbar. I added the little “Search This Site” icon. It works very well. Not sure how it is in IE, since I’m a Firefox user, but I imagine it’s available there, too.
October 8th, 2006 at 1:11 pm
Search is very important and is a really nice feature to have. Fourtunately, K2 for WP has it embeded and I use styles on top of K2 anyways.
October 30th, 2006 at 9:34 am
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