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At its very basis, a site search tool works just like an internet search tool on search engines. It is just on a smaller scale... a MUCH smaller scale.
Basically you are giving your visitors a chance to "search" your site for specific things they are interested in, or a topic that they read on a previous visit.
This can be useful if you have a large website with thousands of pages, giving your visitors an option to find what they are looking for. It was always perplexing that people didn't bookmark the page if they liked it, but it still gave an option.
If you have a smaller site, it is really way more trouble than it is worth. Plus, if you are using a blog, most blogging software comes with a built in search tool or a plugin you can add.
Site search tools became popular amongst webmasters several years back when a few enterprising programmers decided to build their own search tool for their site. Very quickly, they became the "fad" and the big search engines even bought some of them ( or used their own code) to allow site owners to install them on individual sites.
Of course, they were branded and a great way for the big search engines to build loyalty and exposure from the efforts of the webmaster. Few knew they were actually giving away valuable search data to the search engine, for free.
Site Search tools are basically useless.
As I said earlier, site search tools were all the rage for a short while. I have not seen figures on it lately ( I am not entirely sure anyone is actually monitoring it on a wide scale anymore), but I would venture an educated guess that the use of individual site search tools is down in the 2% range, with the possible exception of forums. Those would be in the 10% range (haven't you ever searched for an old post that you remember reading... sometime last year on your favorite forums?)
However, given the complexity of the major search engines and the fact that they are on an endless quest to index EVERYTHING, whatever pages you have on your site will be indexed and listed on by the Search engines.
Knowing this, the thing you have to do is make sure you are ranking well for the topic of your page or post by picking the proper keywords and building your SEO campaigns around them.
See our Test: Game Changing Keywords Tool
Why it is Crucial to Rank Well in Search Engines.
The importance of ranking well in for a particular search term can not be understated. If your website or blog is going to get ANY organic traffic, it had better rank in a least the top 10 of search results. The reason for this is simple. The number of visits to your website is directly proportional to your search engine rank position, called "SERP".
Visits to each site in the top ten breaks down as follows:
Searches |
SERP |
% of Clicks |
Visits |
1000 |
1 |
42.1% |
421 |
1000 |
2 |
11.9% |
119 |
1000 |
3 |
8.5% |
85 |
1000 |
4 |
6.1% |
61 |
1000 |
5 |
4.9% |
49 |
1000 |
6 |
4.1% |
41 |
1000 |
7 |
3.4% |
34 |
1000 |
8 |
3.0% |
30 |
1000 |
9 |
2.8% |
28 |
1000 |
10 |
3.0% |
30 |
The top position gets 42% of the clicks for that search term. If you have a website or blog that you wish to make money with (and there are Trillions of dollars made everyday) you can see the importance of ranking well for a term that is searched frequently, preferably at least 1000 times a day, but less will work if you have a very targeted market.
There are really only three major internet search tools or engines: Google, Yahoo, and Bing (formerly MSN). For simplicity, you should concentrate on your Google SERP because of their shear domination of the market.
Game Changing Keywords Tool
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