When someone mentions online search, Google comes to mind. The dominant search engine has won the digital marketing department’s hearts and minds over the years and generated enormous revenues. But search-engine marketing doesn’t necessarily have to end there, and why let Google have all the fun? Inside a company’s website lies plenty of potential in the site search to yield positive results.

Site-search and search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo are designed to help individual users find the content they are searching for. They provide millions of search results for users to sift through, though most users only look through the first search engine results page (SERP). Website proprietors have an opportunity to improve user journeys, which can lead to higher user retention.

“On Site search” plays a different role, though, than that of a web search engine. Google can help get traffic to a website, but how can a publisher keep users on that site? How can sites strengthen the average-visit duration and the pages per visit? Answering these questions the right way can lead publishers to increased monetization, which simply means more revenue from display ad placements on the proprietor’s site. It starts with understanding on-site search and how to improve it for the benefit of the user and the business.

For e-commerce websites, site-search engines are everything. Approximately 20 percent of these kinds of websites’ search traffic comes from the website’s internal site search, but this can reach as high as 30-40 percent. Consumers using site search already know what they’re looking for, and thus are more ready to buy. Having an optimized site search that helps guide them more quickly toward the right product can help raise purchase conversions. Remember, a frustrated customer frustrated by his or her inability to find the product is more likely to bounce.

Publishers of all sorts can benefit from site search, but it depends on what sector. The numbers vary by industry. For example, “wiki” websites or a specific website like Encyclopedia Britannica certainly could, since the search is critical for the user experience. News websites tend to lack capable site search engines, because the demand is low, with around and less than one percent of traffic. On news agency websites, users tend to look for items by category or browse through the site without an aim to see the stories since they don’t necessarily have something specific to search.

Still, it’s critical to have a search ability that answers these existing search queries. We may be facing a chicken and egg problem. Search accounts for a low amount of traffic, but it might be due to faulty search tools. After all, a study by Forrester Research found that 43 percent of visitors go immediately to the search bar when they enter a new website. That search makes up such a dramatically lower proportion of the traffic more likely than not indicates there is considerable room for improvement. There is an opportunity here to drive traffic in a way that will increase revenues.

One aspect of why search is crucial is not immediately apparent. Who is it that needs the search function the most? A new user of a website. New users do not know how the website is structured. Beyond that, the odds are they have no intention of familiarizing themselves with the site enough to understand the logic of how things are cataloged. New users need a simple way of immediately finding what they are looking for. After a publisher has gone through the painstaking efforts of finally getting a new user to the site, it is wasteful to have that user leave without finding the relevant page or content item. It is often stuffed several clicks away. Furthermore, the problem of discoverability increases as the page grows and becomes more cluttered over time.

There are several changes publishers can make at the outset to the search on site to make the user experience better and streamlined. These minor changes can make a great deal of difference to a user, especially one who uses it on his or her phone. For example, placement on the web page, the call to action button for “search,” and a user-friendly design, are critical tenets of positive user experience (UX).

Websites must deliver relevant results quickly. Relevancy has to do with semantics and how the site can analyze the user’s search query to understand what he or she is truly looking for. Providing an endless list of results can be frustrating, so taking long-tail keyword searches and designing the search to understand what’s really at the heart of the query is critical. The results can also look better. Currently, sites often list results in a very dry fashion list view. Instead, they could add features like pictures, video thumbnails, title view, or many others to optimize the look and feel. One feature showing promising results is site-search suggestions. The function can give users ideas of what to search for, and some statistics suggest 25 percent of users will click on site-search suggestions.

Lastly, the amount of data extracted from on-site search has enormous value to publishers and merchants. Query data from search can give insights into what user interests. It provides clues on what kind of content to invest in, even if some things in search are harder to find. The data can help a proprietor optimize the website to make improvements throughout in ways that will enhance the user experience, increase visit duration, and average pages per session numbers. A crucial piece of data that can only be revealed by search is data from “no results” searches. If a user clicks around but can’t find the desired page or content item, he or she leaves the site. The publisher is none the wiser on what information could have made the user stay on the site. But a no-results query reveals what useful information publishers can add to the website that users want to find.

While site search might seem like a triviality, it has tremendous merit. Many may think of “search” as Google’s area. But Google can’t necessarily provide the depth on any individual website that the website can for itself. The benefits are there for the taking, and it’s time to squeeze the most out of the potential on on-site search.

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The article was first published on Business 2 Community on August 19th, 2020

Site search is often confused with Google’s search engine, which sometimes makes website owners confused and uncertain why they need to invest in such a tool for their website.

Do not be mistaken, a search for within the website provide your website audience the ability to find and consume the content that they’re looking for, thus stay longer and see more pages across the site.

when a prospective reader is searching within a website, their intent is different than when they conduct an external Google search because they are devoting time on your site. They offer you clues into what specific content, product or service they are interested in.

Whether you’re a content publisher, an e-commerce site, or whether you simply have a large website, you need to what it is, how to use it, and why it matters.

Omri Argaman, Zoomd Co-Founder and CMO, explains why many publishers fail to see the importance of search.

Read the full article on B2C.com

For centuries, people have found hundreds of ways to communicate and collaborate for both professional and personal aims. Since the time when the Internet came into play, these channels of human communication have witnessed prominent progress. It has become especially significant and impressive in the last decade, with broader availability of the Internet and the development of new technologies.

Ten or twenty years ago having a website was seen as a kind of luxury, while today it is a widely used and important factor of personal, professional, and business growth. More specifically, since the rise of corporate websites, the core business of companies was to create websites with compelling, relevant, and searchable information — from product descriptions, location pages to blog posts. However, many of these companies have put too much emphasis on external search engine results and rankings, while overlooking the importance of internal search function capabilities within their websites — claiming that this functionality receives a low priority due to a false assumption of “a low percentage of our users are proactively searching for content within the website itself”, which we know is quite the opposite.

Up until recently, users were often faced with an overabundance of hazy or off-point search results, too few results, or, in some cases, no results at all. The search engines were implemented without consideration of user-profiles — thus the search suffered, and the site visitors made notice. When users encounter a bad search experience, they remember it.

Are publishers investing resources in the correct revenue channels?

In recent years publishers have started to understand that if they spend most of their resources on optimizing their SEO efforts but neglect optimizing the specific search capabilities and inquires within their website, they are basically not completing the goal of getting their readers to the final destination, which means failing to lead each user to the right content at the right time. In other words, when a prospective reader is searching within a website, their intent is different than when they conduct an external Google search because they are devoting time on your site. They offer you clues into what specific content, product or service they are interested in.

Today’s internal website search solutions provide both navigational and informational benefits. In addition, most modern websites and apps are jammed with information in multiple formats organized in a variety of ways across different microsites and subdomains.

By analyzing how and what visitors are searching for via your internal search tool, you can define what new content you can offer, update your keyword strategies for an organic search or even adjust your site structure to present the most searched for topics first. Furthermore, if your existing users are looking for specific information that you don’t have available yet, you can create new site pages accordingly. Utilizing search analytics will also help identify and determine website navigational or site structure issues. By solving these issues, users can get to the content they need most, including key transactional pages like forms and contact pages.

After talking with and meeting hundreds of online publishers (website owners, digital editors, design directors, etc.) from many different verticals, I was astonished to find that while many of them understand the importance of having an internal optimized search solution that improves their overall user experience, they don’t necessarily agree on spending resources for development and for conducting day-to-day maintenance. As a result of an ecosystem that keeps growing and that is getting more competitive every day, most publishers are very strict about measuring each expense carefully, thus neglecting maintenance and development on their own internal search widget/tool/solution. Their lack of attention and investment concerning this important issue can also result in a loss of extra revenue. Most publishers I talked to had the basic assumption that investing in an internal onsite search is an expensive business, which in most cases it is, but they were happy to hear about an existing alternative that is free — YES, we offer it for free.

Thus, we now see a crucial need in the ecosystem for the vast majority of content-based websites to find a cost-effective solution for this problem. We at Zoomd have recognized this new opportunity. We have created a top of the line, patented on-site search solution that will solve this exact need and much more. In recent years, we also started to offer monetization solutions for those publishers interested in improving their overall eCMP (average of an additional 3%-4% revenue within the first month), inviting publishers to add us to the existing waterfall.
Our search formula saves publishers’ resources and also provides the most optimal user experience. Who wouldn’t want to use it?

From years of experience and bulk data analysis from our publishers and longtime partners, we came to understand that up to 40% of online website visitors use a site search box when it’s offered.

It’s not enough to just create a nice internal search solution “on the fly” (i.e. one that is developed in-house or by a 3rd party) simply because you don’t have or want to spend the resources necessary to improve the search algorithms.

So……how easy is it for visitors to find information on your website?

As a site grows more substantial with more resources, content, and blog posts, it becomes harder for visitors to find the content most relevant for them.
How can customers find the specific topic or resource article they are looking for without scrolling through an entire library of content?

The answer is simple.
Customers can effortlessly find content on your site using a customizable internal search tool that Zoomd has invented — completely free of charge.

About Adam:
Adam is the Senior Business Development Manager who defines, develops and executes Zoomd’s business strategy, leading the onboarding of new partnerships that mainly consist of tier-one websites from top markets. Adam has an international background and prior to Zoomd, has worked in sales and business development at ad tech and MarTech companies for over six years.
He is highly knowledgeable of publishers’ pains and needs in a market that changes on the fly. When he finds some time off, he enjoys sports activities and cooking.