This case study analyses searching behaviour on a government agency intranet site. The agency is medium sized and employs over 1,000, mostly clerical, staff.
Search logs were used to look at the topics that people mainly searched for over a two-year period.
I wanted to know which topics were consistently popular so find-ability could be improved through changes to the information architecture, additions to content, review of metadata and search configuration, etc.
This study concerns search topics, not individual search terms.
| Rank | Topic | Rank | Topic |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | flexi time | 26 | corporate governance |
| 2 | leave | 27 | mobile phones |
| 3 | newsletters superseded by the intranet | 28 | occupational health and safety |
| 4 | court of law associated with the agency | 29 | marketing |
| 5 | position descriptions | 30 | call centres |
| 6 | internal staff directory | 31 | administrative system 'A" |
| 7 | dlegation of authority | 32 | allowances |
| 8 | core business system 'A' | 33 | chart of accounts |
| 9 | penalties | 34 | records |
| 10 | abstracts of current awareness articles | 35 | guidelines |
| 11 | code of conduct | 36 | the intranet |
| 12 | standards | 37 | recruitment |
| 13 | privacy | 38 | business model |
| 14 | templates | 39 | inspections |
| 15 | media releases | 40 | projects |
| 16 | business names | 41 | section 52 of a particular Act |
| 17 | home building | 42 | intranet content management system |
| 18 | pay | 43 | Christmas |
| 19 | overtime | 44 | memos |
| 20 | core business system 'B' | 45 | cost centres |
| 21 | annual reports | 46 | fax |
| 22 | personnel handbook | 47 | legislation |
| 23 | salaries | 48 | pawnbrokers |
| 24 | aboriginal issues | 49 | booklets |
| 25 | rentals | 50 | circulars |
Search logs are a valuable source of information about behaviour on the intranet.They can be used to: