Louis Rosenfeld has writen a post noting his discussion about search logs with Guy Valerio at the Financial Times. The FT people use the search logs to see what may be hot news for the coming days' papers and what may be falling off the radar in terms of reader interest.
On the surface it seems such a simple idea, and I guess it is. If your users are looking for it you need to address it and in search logs you have readily available and continual stream of information.
When redesigning the main University websites we used search logs for a number of things. Each week I was emailed a log of the searches carried out in the University search engine, Panoptic. I scanned them for content ideas, to see what was 'most-wanted', to get an idea about the sort of things people weren't finding by browsing and the terms searchers used to describe common information on the University site. For example, a lot of people searched for courses using the UoS code. In further development of the search engine a correlation between course name and code then would be useful in the configuration. The terms used for courses themselves were varied but we got a fairly good idea that students call things 'degrees' and not 'programs'. This sort of analysis helped with labelling.
Search logs aren't just useful when redesigning, as the guy from FT pointed out, they should be used all the time. You are always in touch with what people are using your site for and your content can be more timely as a result. Daypop, a search engine for news and blogs, displays the top 10 searches at the moment you view the site. (They also list the top topics in the blogging and news worlds, a must read if you are interested in the issues that are blowing across the net RIGHT NOW).
If you want to read more about using search logs in your design and content work:Dey Alexander's Search log analysis resources, Currybetdotnet - How search can help you understand your audience and A Day in the life of BBCi search and Digital Web's Using web analytics to predict the future.
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