Making the University's web search more relevant
A university as large as the University of Minnesota can be difficult to navigate. Recently, people from across the university have taken steps to ameliorate that problem. Called “tuning,” the goal is to make the search results of the University’s website more relevant and make University offices, departments and people easier to find.
Hundreds of common search phrases have been coded into the search engine with the most likely relevant results at the top. For example, if someone now searches for “bus pass,” the top result leads to the Parking and Transportation website, where University faculty, staff and students can buy a transit pass. Before this process, the link to Parking and Transportation was tenth on the search results page.
Tuning cannot replace a good search application, but it can hopefully help visitors to the University’s website find what they are looking for. If you have any suggestions about how to improve the search results, please submit them to tel@umn.edu.
Give us your feedback
Is there a search query you think needs tuning? Have you noticed the search function is more relevant? Let us know what you think by sending an email to the Technology Enhanced Learning team at tel@umn.edu.
How to spot tuned results
Links that have been manually added for specific search queries are listed at the top of the page, with “Keymatch” to the right of the results.
