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>>Helping Users Navigate Your Web Site > Using Search > Searching a Web Site > Suggested Results

Suggested Results

Prerequisite: You must be a member of the Administrators Group or assigned the Search-Admin role to access Suggested Results. See Also: Defining Roles

Your Web site may contain thousands of content items. Sometimes, depending on the search phrase, you want to focus the visitor's attention on a few topics. The Suggested Results feature lets you create a set of search terms, then specify content to appear at the top of the results when someone searches on a term.

Suggested Result links can jump to your Web site or an external Web site.

IMPORTANT:
* Prior to Ektron version 8.5, Suggested Results could be language specific. Beginning with version 8.5, Suggested Results does not filter based on language.
* Suggested Results no longer use terms from the Synonyms Set feature.

This section also contains the following topics.

Using Suggested Results to Direct Site Visitors

Creating a Set of Suggested Results

Displaying Suggested Results

Editing a Suggested Result Set

Deleting a Suggested Results Set

Using Suggested Results to Direct Site Visitors

Use this feature to provide search results that do not naturally appear at the top of the page. For example, you manage a university’s Web site. When a site visitor wants to know where to mail a tuition payment, he enters bill into the search field and gets these results.

Faculty member Bill McDermott

The Student Bill of Rights

How a Bill Becomes Law

Frustrated, many people call the business office to get information that exists on the Web site but is difficult to find.

Using Ektron, you create Suggested Results to direct site visitors to the correct Web pages. To continue this example, you could create

a title (such as Tuition) that describes a set of terms and links

a list of synonyms that visitors might enter when searching for the tuition page on your site

a Suggested Results list, where you assign the content “Tuition & Fees”

After you set up Suggested Results, this is a typical sequence of events.

1. A site visitor enters text on your Search page.

2. The text matches a term in the Phrases list of a Suggested Results set.

3. Suggested Result links assigned to the phrase appear in a special area of the results page. They appear in the same order that you created in the Suggested Results set.

NOTE: The illustration below is an example of how suggested results may appear. Your developer styles suggested results in the ResultsView server control.

4. The search term’s regular results may also appear. Your developer determines their location on the results page.

Using Suggested Results to Enhance Business Opportunities

You can use Suggested Results to direct site visitors to business partners' Web sites. One example is a smoking cessation clinic near your hospital. When someone visits your Web site and searches for smoking, you can set the clinic to be the top Suggested Result.

As another example, your organization creates widgets but does not implement or customize them. Over time, several agencies develop experience at deploying and customizing your widgets. Therefore, you want to promote the supporting businesses on your site. The following steps describe how this works.

  1. Create a phrase with synonyms - deploy, install, implement, customize, modify, adapt.
  2. Assign the Web sites of approved agencies to the Suggested Results list.
  3. When a site visitor searches for the word implement, he gets links to those agencies’ Web sites.

Suggested Results can also be used to advertise products, as used in the sponsored results section of search engines like Google® search and Yahoo!®.

Creating a Set of Suggested Results

Follow these steps to create a set of Suggested Results.

1. In the Ektron Workarea, go to Settings > Configuration > Search > Suggested Results.

2. Click .

3. The following screen appears.

4. Use the following table to complete the fields.

Field

Description

Name

A word that names the Suggested Results set and is the first synonym. (You cannot repeat the phrase in the Synonyms.)

Phrases

The list of words that triggers the Suggested Results you will create below. That is, if a user enters a search phrase that matches any term in the Synonyms, the Suggested Results appear.

Suggested Results

The links to appear when a phrase or synonym is found. To define them, place the cursor in this field and click. A menu appears (see illustration below).

5. Click Add.

6. The following screen appears. Here, you add the URL, text, and summary for each Suggested Result.

7. Use the following table to complete the fields.

8. Click Save ().

9. The Add Suggested Results screen reappears. You can add more links, edit existing ones, etc. When done, click Save ().

Displaying Suggested Results

To display suggested results using templated server controls, set up a SiteSearchResultsView control whose Eval statement refers to SuggestedResults. For example:

<ektron:SiteSearchResultsView ID="r" runat="server" ControllerID="c">
	<ItemTemplate>
	  	<h3> Suggested Results</h3>      
	<asp:ListView ID="suggestedResults" runat="server" DataSource='<%# Eval("SuggestedResults") %>'>
		<ItemTemplate>
			<span class="highlight">
			<a href="<%# Eval("Url") %>"><%# Eval("Title") %></a>
			<%# Eval("Summary") %> </span>
			</br>
		</ItemTemplate>
	</asp:ListView>
	</ItemTemplate>
</ektron:SiteSearchResultsView>

The suggested results class displays only three fields: title, URL, and summary.

If you want regular search results to appear below suggested results (as shown in Suggested Results), your developer may want to style the suggested results to stand out. Some styling is shown above.

Displaying Regular Search Results Below Suggested Results

You may want to display regular search results below suggested results. If you want to do this and customize the standard result template, Ektron recommends the modifications shown below.

On the other hand, if you want to display standard results and use the default template, Ektron recommends inserting a separate SiteSearchResultsView control below the suggested results control. See Also: SearchResultsView Server Control

Editing a Suggested Result Set

The following sections explain how to perform the following edits on a Suggested Result Set.

Adding a Link to a Suggested Result Set

Editing a Link in a Suggested Result Set

Removing a Link from a Suggested Result Set

Rearranging the Sequence of a Suggested Results Set

Deleting a Suggested Results Set

Adding a Link to a Suggested Result Set

1. From the Ektron Workarea, go to Settings > Configuration > Search > Suggested Results.

2. Select the Suggested Results set to which you want to add a link.

3. Click .

4. Place the cursor over the first result in the Suggested Results area of the screen.

5. Click once and a menu appears.

6. Click Add.

7. The Add New Suggested Results screen appears.

8. See Use the following table to complete the fields.

9. Click Save ().

10. Click Save () again.

Editing a Link in a Suggested Result Set

1. From the Ektron Workarea, go to Settings > Configuration > Search > Suggested Results.

2. Select the Suggested Results set that you want to edit.

3. Click .

4. Place the cursor in the Suggested Results area of the screen.

5. Place the cursor on the result that you want to edit.

6. Click once and a menu appears.

7. Click Edit.

8. See Use the following table to complete the fields.

9. Click Save ().

10. Click Save () again.

Removing a Link from a Suggested Result Set

1. From the Ektron Workarea, go to Settings > Configuration > Search > Suggested Results.

2. Select the Suggested Results set from which you want to remove a link.

3. Click .

4. Place the cursor in the Suggested Results area of the screen.

5. Place the cursor over the result that you want to delete.

6. Click once and a menu appears.

7. Click Delete.

8. A confirmation message appears. Click OK.

9. Click Save ().

Rearranging the Sequence of a Suggested Results Set

Use this procedure to move Suggested Results up or down within a list.

1. From the Ektron Workarea, go to Settings > Configuration > Search > Suggested Results.

2. Select the Suggested Results set from which you want to remove a link.

3. Click .

4. Place the cursor in the Suggested Results area of the screen.

5. Place the cursor over the result that you want to move up or down.

6. Click once and a menu appears.

7. Click Move Up or Move Down.

8. Click Save ().

Deleting a Suggested Results Set

1. From the Ektron Workarea, go to Settings > Configuration > Search > Suggested Results.

2. Select the Suggested Results set from which you want to remove a link.

3. Click Delete ().

4. Click OK to the confirmation message.


Ektron Version 8.5, Doc. Rev. 2.0 (Dec. 2011)
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Ektron Documentation, © 2011 Ektron, Inc.