{"id":146545,"date":"2024-11-27T15:09:05","date_gmt":"2024-11-27T14:09:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spotler.com\/guides\/what-is-site-search"},"modified":"2025-09-29T16:20:20","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T14:20:20","slug":"what-is-site-search","status":"publish","type":"guides","link":"https:\/\/spotler.com\/en-de\/guides\/what-is-site-search","title":{"rendered":"What is site search?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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What is site search?<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Thanks to your hard work on your product and content, customers can find you easily amongst the noise of the internet via online search. But then they land on your website and have to click around to find what they\u2019re after.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Site search is the solution. Think of it as Google Search just for your site; with a simple text input, you can guide your customers to precisely where they want to go.<\/p>\n

Why is site search interesting for marketers?<\/h2>\n

It is interesting for marketers because site search is a part of your site. And it doesn’t matter whether you run a blog site or a web shop with two thousand articles. Furthermore, it is interesting for marketers because the result of a search should match the search intention of the website visitor.<\/p>\n

Of course, the result of a search is a summary of content that matches the keywords entered. But here’s the thing: does that summary also match the search intent or search need of the website visitor?<\/p>\n

Marketers understand that an optimal match between search needs and presented search results is good for engagement or user experience as well as for conversion. Furthermore, you can optimise your site with good search functionality. A possible mismatch between the page visitors land on and the content they are looking for can be solved with a well-designed search functionality.<\/p>\n

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Site search can lower your website bounce rate<\/h3>\n

The percentage of visitors who come to your site and do not perform any follow-up action is called the website bounce rate. A follow-up action refers to clicking on a link, filling out a form or making a purchase.<\/p>\n

Positive for your Google Ranking<\/h3>\n

Despite Google revealing little about how websites are evaluated when determining search rankings, it is not inconceivable that the bounce rate plays a role in it. An extensive study by the well-known SEMrush shows that<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Once you add site search to your site, you invite visitors to enter a search query if they don’t see the desired result immediately in front of them. In this way, you can prevent visitors from leaving your site immediately. You still have a chance, so to speak, to entice them to stay longer on your site.<\/p>\n

Condition is: the displayed result must meet the search intention. Otherwise, your visitor will still leave. In short, your site search must be good.<\/p>\n

What are the main characteristics of good site search?<\/h2>\n

A good site search has the following characteristics: delivers relevant<\/strong> search results, delivers these results immediately <\/strong>and without delay, can cope well with spelling errors and synonyms<\/strong>, is personalised <\/strong>to user behaviour and offers sufficient filtering and sorting options<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Relevance: search results aligned with search intent<\/h3>\n

Whether your visitors find what they are looking for on your site depends largely on your offerings. Your content – in whatever form – will have to be relevant.<\/p>\n

If someone searches ‘long-sleeved running shirt’ in your sportswear webshop, but you only sell short-sleeved running shirts, they aren’t going to hang around. Site search will only help your bottom line if you have relevant content to find in the first place!<\/p>\n

Know what visitors type in<\/h3>\n

Do keyword research to find out how people are searching for your content. Do they prefer to type in \u201crunning clothes winter\u201d or \u201crunning\u201d or indeed exactly \u201clong-sleeved running shirt\u201d? If you want to know more about that, check out Google Ads’ keyword planner<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The next step is to give your content the right title tags and meta descriptions . If you give your content the right titles and descriptions, it’s more likely that a search will return the right results. Not only on your own site through your own site search, but ultimately through Google. An example from Nike:<\/p>\n

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Site search is wise for any website<\/h3>\n

Posting the right titles and descriptions applies not only to web shops, but also to sites that post other content. Think: sites with lots of written articles, sites with lots of images, sites with overviews or rankings (e.g. sports results). Of course: the larger and more diverse the site, the more important site search is. Still, even small sites can benefit from the advantages of site search. In WordPress<\/a>, you can even use free web templates including search capabilities.So you can start using site search with very little fuss..<\/p>\n

To give another example of how organisations do their best to display search results which are as relevant as possible: take a look at the example from B&Qwith the search result on the query ‘watering can’. showing an image of the product and its buyer reviews along with the price on the search results page makes it easy to choose exactly the right one.<\/p>\n

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Speed: instant results without delay<\/h3>\n

There are many techniques you can apply to improve the<\/a> speed at which query results are displayed. We’re getting into the technical world of SQL, Python, software development and data science here.<\/p>\n

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Google Page Speed Insights look at coding elements, not just content<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

In addition to showing relevant search results, speed is important. You can be so relevant with your search results but if a visitor has to wait a long time for this result, he will still drop out. And by \u201clong wait,\u201d think longer than three seconds.<\/p>\n

Use effective indexing<\/h3>\n

In simple terms; suppose you have a textbook in your hands and you are looking for information on one specific subject. Flipping through every page from start to finish would be a slow and frustrating exercise. For this reason, you will often find an index or register in textbooks:<\/p>\n

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A book that you hold in your hands is a fixed thing. A book index can be written once and every reference is also fixed. But a Web site is constantly changing. Products change, blog articles change, topics are added et cetera. You will have to keep track of all this. You can no doubt imagine that effective indexing is important for the speed with which relevant search results are displayed.<\/p>\n

Error tolerance: dealing with spelling mistakes and synonyms<\/h3>\n

We\u2019ve all done this when we\u2019re in a rush:<\/p>\n

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Good site search takes typos and misspellings into account. If the search result is a blank screen or “no results”, many of us will conclude that the content being searched for does not exist. Especially if a website visitor types in “sneaker” and the site search only accounts for “sneakers”. In this case, there is not even a misspelling.<\/p>\n

Another common obstacle has to do with synonyms. It’s a shame if a website visitor types in \u201cdenim”, and your site search only knows about \u201cjeans”. Good site search is equipped with intelligent fault tolerance. This includes the following:<\/p>\n