[Sigia-l] Testing a Search installation or implementation

[Avi Rappoport]

At 3:59 PM -0600 2/24/04, O'Neill, Todd wrote:
>  >From the business point of view we would like to: A. Get it installed;
>B. Connect it to our site; C. Crawl, Index, Repeat. We tune, tune, tune
>to hone the results to a fine edge, then continue tuning for the
>lifespan of the product.
>
>I am oversimplifying (to some extent.)

That sounds like a pretty good plan.  In my experiences, the issues 
are indexing the right things (inclusion and exclusion), designing a 
simple interface with the best defaults, learning what users want in 
relevance and sometimes adjusting the content.  When you tune, be 
sure to spend a fair amount of time on usability testing the 
interaction, both screen interface and functionality -- users are 
often illogical but you have to live with that.

There are a couple of issues that don't come up in other kinds of 
application deployment. One is that search is by nature dynamic.  You 
can never tell for sure what people will look for, what vocabulary 
they will use, and what they will really want.  That's the downside. 
More positively, the indexer can usually process new content without 
much human intervention, so announcements and news on the site are 
easily findable.

What I'm trying to get at here is that there is no such thing as a 
"fine edge" for search.  It's more like a swiss army knife -- people 
grab it when they need a screwdriver, toothpick or nail file, not 
just a knife.  We do the best we can.

I think you're right to be planning on tuning forever.  If you have 
manual search suggestions (best bets), you'll want to set up a 
continuing process to update them, based on query word frequency from 
the logs and using what you can of the site taxonomy.  Search logs 
can be interesting for learning about both user vocabulary and 
content demand, so reviewing those periodically is worthwhile as well.

Hope that helps!

Avi



-- 
   Avi Rappoport, Search Engine Consultant <mailto:avirr at searchtools.com> 
   Complete Guide to Search Engines for Web Sites and Intranets
             <http://www.searchtools.com>