A lot of you know that as a University we have a lot of words for things that can often be construed as jargon. What *we* call something at our University might not be what *everyone else* calls it.
Our site search statistics demonstrate this. Let’s talk about housing on campus. Most of us refer to the housing we offer here as “Residence Halls” or something thereabout. But when you talk to a current student or incoming student, they’ll refer to them as “dorms” or simply “housing.” So what do the search stats say?
Ranked #619: residence halls
Ranked #156: dorms
Ranked #24: housing
The problem with this is, the search term “residence halls” actually yields better results in the search. Mainly because we’ve created our content with how we refer to it at the forefront. When in reality, most people looking for this info are using either “dorms” or “housing” as their search terms.
So what’s the difference in how many people are performing these searches? Here are the number of people off campus searching with these terms (in a 4-month time period):
housing: 8,950
dorms: 1,366 (“dorm” singular yields another 317)
residence halls: 376
There you have it!
So what are some other things we might call something internally that folks outside the University are calling completely different? Filling this gap can make the website easier for people to use.
I came across this post the goes a bit further with data from Google on search terms related to “dorms”. This tool could also provide some valuable insight for other term comparisons. http://doteduguru.com/id273-missed-opportunities-for-college-dorm-searches-part-1.html
Great find, Kit! We definitely plan on beefing up our reporting ability. This is exactly the kind of tool that will help us figure out how best to help our audiences find what they need. .eduGuru is a great blog too — though I didn’t read his post, FJ’s post I had read previously which inspired me to look at our own site search stats.
I want to stress that by no means am I suggesting we abandon all concept of calling our housing facilities “residence halls.” There certainly is a time and place for that. All I’m suggesting is that how we create the content (keywords, page titles, page text, etc.) on the web *directly impacts* the ability of our users to find it whether through searching or standard navigation. Strategies like including more common search terms (e.g., dorms, housing, etc.) in your page’s keywords can help with this, but it isn’t 100% bulletproof.
One of the tasks of this redesign is to find more efficient and effective ways to help folks find what they’re looking for.
That’s cool! At our school, we just refer to them in general as dorms, for there area few “dorms” that are houses, or actual dorms (which are off-campus). I live in a residence Hall, originally made for the 1980 Olympics.
Ryan- You posted the Top 30 Search Queries earlier. Am I missing something, or can we use the search queries that have been used in the past as a clue to what folks are looking for in our site?
@aw3sumpunk: Thanks for the comment. Yes it would seem from our research that a lot of folks who aren’t yet close to the university system (and even some of those who are currently living in it) reach for that term more frequently, despite it being probably not the most accurate representation for what the residence halls truly are.
@Bamby: Absolutely! We are using the search queries to help guide the new site map that is being created for the redesigned site. Search queries though are only one aspect of the research — it is important to ask the question when looking at the search queries: “Did someone search for this just because they didn’t want to bother navigating to it or did they search for it because they were frustrated that they couldn’t find what they wanted?” A lot of folks these days, due to sites like Google and Yahoo!, are simply used to searching. So it’s more natural for them to do it than to navigate. We’re finding that, while search as a primary form of navigation isn’t the best idea, strong search functionality for folks to fall back on is important to have.
I’ve been answering the phone in admissions over the last two weeks and this problem has become very clear to me. Students, or prospective students are searching for things like tuition costs, day classes start, when is tuition due, what books do I need, but they can’t find those things easily by just typing them in to search bar. I’ve learned most of the things can be found on the Student Financial Services or Records and Registration pages but a new students or prospective student or parent would never think to type those phrases in to the search or follow the correct links to get there.
If I think of more, or get more calls, I will let you know.
Great thoughts, Seth! And thanks for coming to my presentation the other day.
Please do let us know of anything you’re hearing from the front lines. As I mentioned the other day in my presentation, this is exactly the point where the rubber meets the road! Our students are why we are here so anything we can do to make life easier on them (and thereby us) ought to be considered with much care.