Almost every­one on the Inter­net uses search. A study by Pew Inter­net last year found that 92 per­cent of adults who are online use search engines to find infor­ma­tion on the Web.

I can­not imag­ine life with­out search. When I have a prob­lem with some­thing I own, such as a DVD play­er, I might look up the prob­lem in the print­ed user guide (if I still have it!), go to the manufacturer’s web site, or just type the name and mod­el of the DVD play­er in Google’s search field. From my expe­ri­ence, Google often pro­vides results that are as use­ful as the manufacturer’s sup­port web site.

Users still search for help even on the iPad, which is fre­quent­ly her­ald­ed as “so intu­itive.”  On the iPhone, I fre­quent­ly use its search fea­ture as I try to find an elu­sive email.

Two weeks ago, I attend­ed an Adobe webi­nar called “Using new Robo­Help 10 fea­tures to make con­tent more search­able.” This blog post gives my impres­sions of RoboHelp’s search engine.

External content search is a welcome addition

Adobe intro­duced exter­nal con­tent search in Robo­Help. This fea­ture enables you to define the key­words that users might type in the Search field and then direct them to an exter­nal web site. For exam­ple, you can set up your help so that when a user types “sup­port web site” in the Search field, the search engine dis­plays an exter­nal URL that you specify.

In the fol­low­ing screen cap­ture, in the Search Terms field, I’ve spec­i­fied the terms “sup­port, ACME sup­port, tech­ni­cal sup­port.” In the help, if a user types one or more of these terms, Robo­Help dis­plays the ACME sup­port web site.

Anoth­er nice fea­ture is that you can define these terms and then export them to oth­er Robo­Help projects, if needed.

How RoboHelp’s search could be better

RoboHelp’s search could be bet­ter by dis­play­ing key­words in the Search engine field.

When you type spe­cif­ic key­words in Google’s search field, the web site dis­plays a list of sug­gest­ed terms as you type the query. This solu­tion helps users because they may type terms incor­rect­ly or may not even be sure how to phrase their queries in a search field. Google dis­plays sug­gest­ed terms and dis­plays rel­e­vant web sites before I even fin­ish typing.

In Robo­Help, users are unfor­tu­nate­ly left on their own when it comes to craft­ing a good search.

Faceted search

Anoth­er wel­come addi­tion would be faceted search. Com­pa­nies, such as Dell, have used this tech­nique for some time. On Dell’s web site you can search for a lap­top or desk­top com­put­er. Alter­na­tive­ly, you can use the fil­ters to help you search by prod­uct cat­e­go­ry, proces­sor, screen size, weight, and so on.

For users, this helps stream­line their choic­es. In an online help sys­tem, users could use faceted search to dis­play con­tent by top­ic type (con­cepts, pro­ce­dures, trou­bleshoot­ing con­tent, files with attach­ments or embed­ded movies, and so on).

“Faceted nav­i­ga­tion is arguable the most sig­nif­i­cant search inno­va­tion in the past decade,” write Peter Morville and Jef­fery Cal­len­der in their book Search Pat­terns.“…Faceted nav­i­ga­tion is being rapid­ly deployed across an impres­sive­ly wide vari­ety of con­texts and plat­forms.” I don’t see why it can­not be deployed in a Help Author­ing Tool either.

[pullquote]“Faceted nav­i­ga­tion is arguable the most sig­nif­i­cant search inno­va­tion in the past decade…Faceted nav­i­ga­tion is being rapid­ly deployed across an impres­sive­ly wide vari­ety of con­texts and platforms.”[/pullquote]

SEO functionality for RoboHelp

If you end up post­ing your online help project to a pub­lic serv­er so it can be indexed by Google, Robo­Help’s search may not add much value.

Giv­en that more peo­ple may be using Google’s search to find your con­tent instead of RoboHelp’s own search engine, I think Adobe should con­sid­er some sort of Search Engine Opti­miza­tion func­tion­al­i­ty. For exam­ple, it would be nice to see a fea­ture that enables you to adjust key­words, meta­da­ta, and link­ing in your help project so that your con­tent is opti­mized for Google’s search. See my relat­ed blog entry about prepar­ing your online help for pub­lic use.

Do you agree? Could RoboHelp’s search be bet­ter? If so, how?