[Sigia-l] length of nav labels

[Eric Scheid]

On 11/8/05 1:02 AM, "Jared M. Spool" <jspool at uie.com> wrote:

> A tip we learned with using Search logs: They are more valuable if you can
> determine the page from which the user entered the search term. On most
> sites (Amazon is a *big* exception), only a small percentage of search
> terms are entered from the home page. Usually, the user clicks a few pages
> in before entering their term. Knowing which page they are coming from can
> give you a lot of information about the design of that page (and the path
> they took to get there).

[off-list geeky bragging]

Indeed.

I go one step further - I use a simple bit of javascript to capture the
penultimate page as well. [see below] That is, my search log has the usual
stuff, plus the page the search request originated from, and the page prior
to that page. I haven't done any number crunching analysis as such, but it's
informative to just surf through that log. The penultimate page is, of
course, the page that contained the scent that led the user to the page that
didn't satisfy them, and is very handy in guessing their intention.

Being able to track the entire path would of course be even more
interesting, but that requires quite a bit more engineering.

<form method="POST" action="/tools/find.taf?fn=list" id="findform">
  <input name="Keywords" type=TEXT size=10 value="">
  <input name="SearchReferrer" type=hidden value="">
  <input type=SUBMIT value="Find..." class="btn">
</form>
<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">
<!--
document.all.findform.SearchReferrer.value=document.referrer;
// -->
</script>


e.