Search Analytics for your Site

Zipf, meet Smashing

2012-05-17T13:59:07Z

Wrote an article for Smashing Magazine that just went live yesterday. In it I get into the single most important phenomenon in site search analytics, analytics, design, user experience, and all the world: the Zipf Distribution, and how you can take advantage of it.

OK, maybe not the most important thing, but it's up there. Anyway, enjoy.

Updated site search analytics deck

2011-10-12T16:05:07Z

Just presented this one at the Web 2.0 Expo this morning. I've given versions of it before at SXSW 2011 and as part of last year's UIE virtual seminar series. As part of my program of continual improvement in presentation creation, I've beefed up the practical stuff. Hope you find it useful:

Site Search Analytics: 8 things you can do

View more presentations from Louis Rosenfeld

An interview and a review

2011-08-03T00:52:27Z

Another interview; this one by Kaitlin Pike of O'Reilly's Web 2.0 Expo (where I'll be speaking on site search analytics on October 12).

And a really nice review of the book by someone for whom I, over many years, gained endless respect—even if he had dissed the book—Martin White of Intranet Focus. Yay!

By the way, if you have something to say about the book (nice or otherwise), it'd be swell for you to post it to the Amazon page.

Interviewed in SearchEngineLand

2011-07-12T01:16:19Z

"First lady of SEO" and IA Institute board member Shari Thurow kindly interviewed me for SearchEngineLand. The first of two parts ran a couple days ago; I'm blown away by their visibility; never had something retweeted so often. Thanks Shari!

Now on sale!

2011-07-06T14:44:16Z

Whew. Finally! You can buy it right here from the Rosenfeld Media site. US$39 for the loverly full-color paperback plus the DRM-free digital formats (PDF, ePUB, MOBI); US$22 for digital only. The paperback should be available via Amazon and digitals via O'Reilly soon (if not already).

Yay!

It's here!

2011-07-02T18:05:52Z

Domino enjoying the view (and the aroma) of the new book.

Nice to finally have my hands on a copy! We're hoping to put it on sale Tuesday or Wednesday. It's a complicated thing: we have to first get the physical book into four warehouses in three countries on two continents. Then we also have to get the book produced in four digital versions (screen-optimized PDF, printer-optimized PDF, ePUB, and MOBI). Those last two are in a third party's hands, and that could be what ends up holding us up the longest.

We'll certainly update you here (and via @rosenfeldmedia) once it's officially on sale.

Sample chapter published in UX Matters

2011-06-24T14:10:03Z

A full version of Chapter 8—"Practical Tips for Improving Search"—has just been published in UX Matters magazine. It's one of the three tips chapters; the others provide tips on improving content and navigation/metadata (here's the full table of contents if you're interested).

We're still on schedule for the book to ship from the printer to our fulfillment centers on June 28, which is roughly when we'll start accepting orders. We'll be glad to let you know (and send you a 25% discount) as soon as the books is available for purchase.

One week to go!

2011-06-21T16:57:28Z

Our printer says the book will be shipped to our warehouses in the US, UK, and Canada one week from today (June 28), so you should be able to get your hands on it just a few days later. We'll start accepting orders around then.

In the meantime, you might want to sign up for publication notification or subscribe to our newsletter--we'll email you a note that includes a discount code as a thank you for letting us know you're interested.

Or you could sign up for our very cool Future Pack before then, and get 25% off the next four books we publish--it'll definitely include mine!

0 results found!

2011-06-07T20:14:46Z

Absolutely loved this video from elasticpath:

Hat tip to the wonderful Stephanie Zhong, my editor, for sending it my way. Also enjoyed another of elasticpath's series, "If only search engines could understand what we want".

Covers and other images now on Flickr

2011-05-31T18:51:32Z

Have a look; you'll see the covers (front, with cool bubbles; back with nifty testimonials) and the 82 images that will show up between the covers.

Printer tells us it'll be 23 business days from today. That sounds like June 30 or July 1. Hopefully a bit sooner! Sign up here (you'll need to scroll down a bit) to find out when the book is on sale (and receive a discount code to boot!). Or purchase Rosenfeld Media's Future Pack; it's whatever our next four books are (I can only promise you one of them is Search Analytics for Your Site!).

Bad news, good news

2011-05-04T02:14:50Z

I owe you an update! And I'll keep it short.

First the bad news: Marko Hurst has had to opt out of co-authoring the book. We're both really disappointed. I very much wanted and was glad to work with Marko: not only does he bring an exceedingly rare quantitative perspective to UX, but he's a great person. Fortunately I did get to work with Marko: he's changed the way I look at measuring UX, and in the process he's made a huge impact on the book.

Speaking of the book, the good news is that it's finally done! It should go to the printer next week. That means it should go on sale during the second week of June. You have no idea how happy and relieved I am.

if you want to be the first on your block to pick up a copy, sign up to be notified when it goes on sale. We'll also send you a code that'll get you a nice discount when you purchase it directly from Rosenfeld Media. You can also find out via our new free monthly newsletter, the Rosenfeld Review.

In the meantime, whet your appetite by reading what some really nice, really smart people have to say after reading the book's manuscript. Thanks, folks.

Quick update, and a quick case study

2010-08-07T18:23:37Z

We've not disappeared; in fact, we've just finished the first draft of the book! More soon... In the meantime, Avi Rappoport points us to a nifty press release that mentions (drum roll...) site search analytics! RoadRunnerSports.com feels pretty happy with the results; check it out.

Helping Children Find What They Need on the Internet

2009-12-28T17:00:18Z

In a recent article by Stefanie Olsen of the New York Times she describes some of the things that Search Engines do to make using them a little easier such as using the Arial typeface because its considered more legible than other typefaces or bolding keywords in the link and snippets of your results pages. And as we all know, "search" is not perfect at the best of times. Or what do you do if you get stuck? Now what if you are a kid?

As you might expect things get a little more difficult right from the start. Why? Think about how search works for a moment. Search is based upon entering a keyword(s), which requires the use semantics & language. A child's grasp of language is typically less than that of an adult, who also tend to be the ones creating much of the content that children are seeking. Children also tend to think about things as questions, not as a straight keyword entry. Now, what about the goals of a child might differ from an adult - for starters how about using search as a starting point for homework? Again, well, what can I say -- it sucks to be a kid of you are using a search engine.

So if children are already at a deficient when it comes to search what can be done to help them?

One simple method by showing related searches or other content like video, images or news at the bottom of the page. A search on the word dolphins, for example, shows a set of related searches, (sharks, bottlenose dolphins) and two YouTube videos of dolphins at play. Ms. Druin called the bottom of the screen "valuable territory" because children often focus on their hands and the keyboard when they search and see that space first when they glance up.

Stefan Weitz, director of Bing, said that for certain types of tasks, like finding a list of American presidents, people found answers 28 percent faster with a search of images rather than of text. He said that because Bing used more imagery than other search engines, it attracted more children. Microsoft says Bing's audience of 2- to 17-year-olds has grown 76 percent since May. "My daughter who's 5, her typing skills aren't great, but she can browse images of various dog breeds through visual search," Mr. Weitz said.

Future trends in search may also be helpful to children. The move toward voice-activated search like the Google voice search on iPhones and Android phones and audio and video search will prove beneficial to children with limited abilities, experts say.

(*may require registration)

New Google Analytics Features For the Holidays

2009-12-28T16:41:59Z

Just a quick update on some new features that Google Analytics is now providing - post

Be sure to check out the "Annotations" feature and video. It is what I consider one of those "Doh! Why didn't we have it this all along" features that would make a User Experience professional proud to have figured out the disconnect between an offline task and something that should be part of the system. Enjoy!

Google Analytics Adds 8 New Features

2009-12-04T14:52:04Z

As some of you may or may not know, Google Analytics is a free enterprise analytics tool that lets you track various actions that your visitors take on your site. Recently they've been adding some great new features that hep you not only track visitors better, but better data analysis to gain greater insights to help you make better decisions.

In my new post, www.markohurst.com, I break these features down one-by-one and included some videos in case you don't have Google Analytics or would like to see it in action.