Search Analytics for Your Site

Search Analytics for your Site is an excellent, comprehensive approach to understanding and demystifying the black box of search. From understanding the basics of search frequencies along the Zipf curve, to discerning and interpreting search patterns, deriving clusters, understanding tone and intent, analyzing time variance, performing failure analysis and even using search analytics as an input to (my favorites) taxonomy development and contextual navigation, this book is an excellent resource for taking the guesswork and bias out of search remediation and improvement projects. Highly recommended. Nice job.

Seth Earley, CEO, Earley & Associates, Inc.

Search is one of those mission-critical aspects of every web site that is sadly all to often forgotten until the damage has already been done. Lou, on the other hand, is one of those guys who understands search analytics and the opportunity associated with digging into the nuance of customer and search behaviors to mine for organizational gold. In Search Analytics for Your Site, Lou lays out pretty much everything you need to know to mine for that gold and convert it into positive customer experience on your site.

Eric T. Peterson, Founder and Author, Web Analytics Demystified

Clients have asked me countless times to pretty up their search results page design, as if this would distract users from realizing that they’re getting lousy results. That’s no longer necessary, thanks to Lou’s book.

Karen McGrane, Managing Partner, Bond Art + Science

At last a book that explains exactly how to get the best from search analytics so that users can actually find what they are looking for.

Martin White, Managing Director, Intranet Focus Ltd, and author of Making Search Work

Analytics are the single most important tool you have to improve your search experience, and Lou Rosenfeld’s world-class expertise in user-centered design is the place to start.

Pete Bell, co-founder, Endeca

Louis Rosenfeld’s Search Analytics for Your Site is a superlative work from the initial story to the final chapter on bridging web analytics and UX practice. I’m somewhat experienced with event logging methods, but Louis’ book opened my mind to new ways to use analytics. Each chapter is packed with useful information, clear examples, and refreshing caveats that could only come from a master of search analytics. The book is written in an engaging style that makes you feel like Louis is with you on every page. I plan to apply some of the knowledge and techniques immediately. Great book!

Chauncey Wilson, Senior Manager, User Research

If we all agree that user feedback will improve any site’s user experience, why aren’t we spending more time with the actual words our audience uses when asking us for stuff? I can’t imagine a more experienced guide than Lou Rosenfeld to help us put this amazing data to work.

Jeffrey Veen, Founder & CEO, Typekit

Lou is the perfect author to tackle what is essentially unexplored territory in the UX community. With Search Analytics for Your Site, he has uncovered a huge goldmine for UX professionals of all stripes: now we have the tools to finally, finally fix our website and intranet search experiences. This is one of those rare books that makes me pound the table with my fist and yell, ‘Yes! Exactly! Awesome!’ while I’m reading it.

Kristina Halvorson, CEO, Brain Traffic, and author, Content Strategy for the Web

Lou Rosenfeld provides remarkable clarity, insight, and humor on the complicated world of search site analytics, Search Analytics for Your Site will no doubt be an indispensable resource for anyone involved in user experience and web analytics.

Bill Albert, Ph.D, Director, Design and Usability Center, Bentley University

The potential value behind the queries issued by your customers is in practice unbounded. So do not waste this potential— use the knowledge behind these queries. For that you have to understand search analytics and hence you must read this book.

Ricardo Baeza-Yates, VP of Yahoo! Research