March 2019 Newsletter
Summary
We released a new ranking factor to leverage your click data, we’re tidying up unused i14y drawers, & we have a new help page on metadata.
New ranking factor!
Click Data
We are pleased to report that we have implemented a new ranking factor for search sites using our index. As you know, when a user clicks on a particular search result, we record that data. We’re now referencing that click data to improve results ranking for the most popular URLs in your site.
We still encourage you to keep up best practices to boost your search experience:
- Use Best Bets to promote useful pages that do not yet appear at the top of the results
- Review and update your Best Bets periodically
- Maintain an up-to-date and comprehensive sitemap with
<lastmod>dates - Add metadata to the pages and files on your site. This includes unique page titles that match your
<h1>tags. See below for more on metadata.
i14y Tidy Up, Marie Kondo Style
Spring cleaning time!
We have a lot of i14y drawers that do not spark joy, so we are going to toss them. Some may be attached to sites you use, so please be aware that you may see changes.
We will be deleting drawers that are
- Only affiliated with test or development sites AND
- Haven’t had any documents sent to them this fiscal year,
- Or that are not attached to any site at all.
We will keep test drawers that have been updated this fiscal year.
New help page
Everyone’s favorite topic - Metadata
We get a lot of questions about what metadata elements we use, and how we use them, so we’ve published a page to let you know all about it. We’ll keep this page up to date as we add more features.
https://search.gov/manual/metadata.html
Release Notes
Want to learn about the latest features, fixes, and focuses of the Search team? We post monthly Release Notes on our website.