SiteImprove created a search engine solution for the onesuffolk partnership portal, indexing data from 10 separate websites. This solution includes a postcode filter allowing Suffolk website users to get practical search results, specific to their location.

Background

onesuffolk.co.uk is a pioneering website created by a partnership of local authorities in Suffolk.

The onesuffolk portal provides online service information to the community gathered from Suffolk County Council, local borough, district authorities, police, health authorities and voluntary organisations.

The portal brings content from all over Suffolk to one place, providing the people of Suffolk with a single point of contact for all their public sector needs.

The onesuffolk portal provides access to data from over 16,000 pages on 10 separate websites:

• onesuffolk Portal
• St. Edmundsbury Borough Council
• Babergh District Council
• Forest Heath District Council
• Ipswich Borough Council
• Mid Suffolk District Council
• Suffolk Coastal District Council
• Suffolk Constabulary
• Suffolk County Council
• Waveney District Council

The Challenge

To build a search engine that can present each individual user with results that are both relevant to the user’s search term and their location.

If a person is looking for ‘Housing Benefits’ information and lives in Mid Suffolk, they are mostly interested in finding ‘Housing Benefits’ search results from the Mid Suffolk Council.

How do we keep results from other public websites in the Suffolk area from obscuring the more relevant local information?

The Solution

SearchImprove offers a robust and effective search solution which is easy to administer and light on web server resources.

It is a bespoke website search engine which can be tailored to suit organisational needs.

onesuffolk provided SiteImprove with a spreadsheet linking each postcode with its relative parish & district/borough.

Using this information we were able to link each postcode to its associated council website and create a postcode filter for the search solution.

How do We Get the Best Results?

Ranking

As well as the location specific information, it is important to give the user the most relevant search result within that location. SiteImprove’s ranking feature allows onesuffolk to give all documents a score depending on a combination of search term placement, frequency and document context.

SearchImprove differs from other search engines in that it offers extensive adjustment options. This allows administrators to influence search results. Alongside scores created through the search algorithm, SearchImprove allows onesuffolk to fine tune their search engine returns by adding additional scores to the following ranking criteria, which determine the final ranking of the document.

Title:

Search term occurrence in the document title.

Metadata:

Occurrence in metadata such as “Keywords” and “Description”.

Age:

Most up-to-date information can be returned first.

URL:

Search term occurrence reflected in the page URL.

Grouping:

Differentiate between existing groups of documents, by awarding them with different ranking scores.

SearchImprove’s page-ranking feature gives onesuffolk the option to push the best result to the top of the list and offer an “editor’s choice”.

Search Statistics

Development of website usability requires knowledge of user behaviour. This knowledge is fundamental in order to configure a search engine to return useful results.

onesuffolk uses the SearchImprove statistics feature to obtain valuable information about how users search, and the results they receive. This information is then used to evaluate and improve the quality of search results, and to adjust the site content to reflect the interests of its users.

Conclusion

This is just one example of how SearchImprove can be customized to meet a customers needs.

SearchImprove website search allows the webmaster to influence and control search results, so that the website taps into the communication potential of user searches.

Please contact us if you would like to discuss your search engine needs. You can see the onesuffolk SearchImprove solution at http://search.onesuffolk.co.uk.