Related search suggestions are here!
The types of content for sale on our sites has grown exponentially (and quickly!) since we first began and, 10 years on, this means that we don’t have the ideal information architecture in place. It can be confusing for users to search and find easily. If it’s confusing for users, it often means it’s just as hard for search engines to find and understand also.
Around 7million text searches are performed on our sites every month, around 25% of those are refinements (users modify their term) from the original search term. That’s a lot of people who need a hand to get to the items they want.
So we took some inspiration from the ultimate search and find guru - Google.
Google provides a product called ‘Custom Search’ and we applied their customisation recommendations for their Customer Search customers to our own search and find experience to help potential customers (and search engines) discover your items.
‘Even after you’ve assembled the result set for your search engine, your users might still type queries that are too broad. For example, if users search for a health condition, it is not clear what kind of information they are looking for. Are they looking for information about symptoms, treatments, or risk factors? However, if they can select refinements, or categories of search results, they can narrow their searches and get to the answers quickly.’
Enter, related search suggestions. We hope these will help people better navigate and find the items that help them achieve their goals.
