Posts tagged releases

Highlighted Feature

You can now access your raw HTTP logs. These logs contain valuable data on searches, clicks and USASearch tag page loads. 

Read How to Access Your Raw Logs for more details about how to request secure FTP access to your logs.

Other Features

• We open sourced all of the code that powers our Recalls Server API in Github.
• Searchers are now able to search and see results from collections that are not visible in the left-hand navigation on your “main” web results. You can use this option to provide a search box on a small subset of content (such as a policy manual or meeting minutes) while not cluttering up the left-hand navigation on your main results page. (It also helps reduce the likelihood that searchers experience a “dead end” on your main results page.)

Chores

• We upgraded to CentOS 6.3.
• We optimized the routing of search queries so that they’re served by the geographically closest datacenter. 

Highlighted Feature

The display of search results pages is constantly evolving. Some changes are subtle. Others are more noticeable.

In line with industry best practices and commercial search engines, we’ve moved the tools for filtering and sorting results to the top of results list (rather than on the left side). We’ve also added an option to clear all filters.

Chores

• We upgraded to Rails 3.2.11.

Fixes

• Searchers no longer see Did You Mean suggestions for your excluded domains.
• We fixed a cross browser compatibility issue on the Query Logs page in the Admin Center so that the ‘number of clicks’ column is now visible.
• We labeled the Safe Search radio options on our advanced search page as a fieldset to improve accessibility for screen readers.

Highlighted Feature

This week we buckled down and analyzed data on jobs-related searches to ensure that the new federal Jobs GovBox lists the most relevant job openings. 

Searchers can now effectively search for jobs by keyword, agency, state, or work schedule (part-or full-time).

We also focused on not showing the Jobs GovBox when it isn’t relevant (for example, it is no longer shown when searchers look for job safety posters or employment verification forms).

Chores

• We added our posting channel ID to all USAJobs links.
• We set up a cron job to fetch and process job files from USAJobs.
• We added impression and click tracking for the federal Jobs GovBox module.
• We resolved performance discrepancy between our two datacenters.
• We no longer use XML sitemaps to add documents to the USASearch web index.

Fixes

• You can now delete keywords from text best bets.
• Newly added misspellings are now being applied to type-ahead suggestions.
• Searchers can now find jobs in non-standard state locations (for example someone searching for jobs in Washington, DC, will find postings the the location of Washington DC Metro Area, District of Columbia).

Highlighted Feature: The federal Jobs GovBox

We’re excited to announce that searchers looking for jobs on your site can now see all of your agency’s current job openings.

Our new federal Jobs Govbox displays up to three location- and keyword-matched job openings on your results page. For more information on how to turn on this GovBox, see How To Select The Modules That Appear On Your Results Page.

We’ve also open sourced all of the code that powers our Federal Jobs Server API in Github.

Fixes

And, we’ve already pushed two bug fixes for the federal Jobs GovBox to production. Searchers no longer see yet-to-be-opened or already closed jobs. 

Highlighted Feature

Are you curious about the most searched for terms on your site in the past year? They’ll arrive in your inbox in our new, annual Year-in-Review email.

We’ll send you an email every December 15 (along with cheer and goodwill) with a list of the top 1,000 terms searched for on your site over the past year and how many times each term was searched.

Other Features

• Developers using our jobs API can find agency-specific jobs by searching for an agency’s name, abbreviation, or other variant.

Chores

• We upgraded to Rails 3.2.10.
• We sped up our interaction with the Bing Search API.
• We set up an automatic download of current jobs opening from USAJobs’ jobs export.

Fixes

• Searchers and API users are now able to maintain a HTTP connection for multiple requests resulting in shorter response times.

Highlighted Feature

Did you know that mobile search traffic increases during the holidays? 

You can now customize the header on your mobile search results page to create a more seamless experience for visitors to your mobile website. Our new feature allows you to upload your mobile logo and specify a mobile homepage URL.

USASearch > Admin Center > YourSite > Header and Footer

Other Features

• Searchers see Bing image results followed by results from your Flickr photostream. (Example: search for images about hurricane sandy on DOL.gov.)
• Searchers can now sort RSS-based results (such as press releases, blogs, etc.) by date or relevance.
• Searchers now only see tweets from up to three months ago.
• Searchers now only see articles from up to one year ago in the News GovBox.
• You can now exclude specific subdomains or folders from your search results on the Excluded Domains page in the Admin Center.
• You can now segment the keywords for your text Best Bets.
• You now see your domains listed in A-Z order on the Domains page in the Admin Center.
• You now see your requested 3rd Party Tracking scripts in the Admin Center.
• You can now access collection results via our API.

Chores

• We refined the rules of our fetcher to index only HTML pages with the USASearch Javascript tag and any PDF or Microsoft Office documents linked from the tagged HTML page.
• We automatically remove the repetitive @ if you include it as part of your Twitter handle on the Social Media page in the Admin Center.
• We automatically resize your mobile header image if it is too big.
• We updated our Linux kernels, Jenkins, New Relic, and lots of RubyGems.

Fixes

• Searchers can now set a custom date range even if type-ahead search is disabled on your results page.
• Searchers no longer see inactive best bets as recommended pages in the type-ahead search.
• Images no longer overlap on image search results pages.
• We now show both queries and clicks in the analytics reports for customers with really long site handles.
• We fixed a bug with how we recorded clicks for searches with apostrophes.
• We show you an error message when you try to upload an improperly encoded URL  via the URLs & Sitemaps page in the Admin Center.

Highlighted Feature

Searchers often know the exact page they’re looking for. We’ve added a feature to help them find that page even more quickly. 

As searchers type in their query, relevant text Best Bets are shown as Recommended Pages, as shown in the sample below for a search on fa… on DOL.gov.

Other Features

• Searchers can narrow RSS news results by custom date ranges.
• Searchers now see more images above the fold on image results pages.
• Searchers see integrated image results across both the images on your website and in your Flickr photostream.
• You can now add the Digtital Analytics Program’s government-wide analytics tag to your search results pages. Email the Digital Analytics Program at DAP@gsa.gov for more information on setting up the government-wide analytics tag.
• When you add your Twitter handle in the Admin Center, we now show the Twitter GovBox by default.

Chores

• We upgraded the tweetstream and twitter gems.
• We upgraded Jenkins.
• We upgraded to Cloudera 4.1 and installed Impala.

Fixes

• We fixed the URLs within your tweets so that searchers can now click on the links.
• We fixed a bug so that infinite scroll now works on news and image results pages.
• We now index your ISO-8859-1 encoded pages.
• We now always show your no results section on the Query Logs page in the Admin Center.
• We fixed some bugs with how the ends of the day and month were calculated so that the data displayed in our reports is consistent.
• We fixed a bug so that the query timeline chart now displays in all browsers.
• We synced the Query Logs and Click Stats reports so that you now see today’s data for both.

Highlighted Feature: Common Search Metrics for the Digital Strategy

Do you ever feel like you’re drowning in data? Do you feel like finding meaningful insights from the data is like searching for a needle in a haystack? 

To standardize and streamline how agencies collect and report this data, the Digital Government Strategy requires federal executive branch agencies to implement common performance and customer satisfaction metrics. HowTo.gov has published guidance on common metrics, including describing what you should measure, what to do with the data, and common tools to help you collect and analyze your metrics.

To support you in collecting and reporting your site search metrics for the Digital Government Strategy, we’ve added four new reports to the Admin Center.

1. Top “no results” queries

The most popular, valid searches that don’t return any results on your site’s search results page (e.g., because you don’t have the content on your site, or the content isn’t findable by the person’s search term). Review your content to see if you need to add new content, or update existing content to include the words your readers search for. Read our post, How to Analyze Your Query Logs, for more details.

2. Top searches with low click through rates

The most popular search terms that people generally don’t act (click) on. Consider incorporating language from these popular search terms into page titles or descriptions, to encourage searchers to click on your relevant page. Read our post, How to Analyze Your Queries with Low Click-Thru Rates, for more details.

3. Top changing search terms (movement up/down)

Shows trending topics, what’s hot or not. Use this report to investigate why people might be losing interest in once-popular content and consider archiving if it’s no longer needed. For newly popular terms, create new content or update existing content to ensure it’s current, accurate, and complete. Read our post, How to Analyze Your Trending Queries, for more details.

4. Top clicked URLs for specific queries

The most common results that searchers found most relevant or appealing, for specific search terms. Review these popular pages and other customer top tasks to make sure they are current, accurate, complete and compelling. Read our post, How to Analyze Your Click Stats, for more details.

Good news! We completed a major upgrade of our search infrastructure. You likely didn’t notice as we completed the upgrade without any downtime for searchers on your site. 

Our system is now even more secure, stable, and redundant than it was before. Plus, it is faster, too. Highlights of the upgrade follow.

Multihoming

We’ve always had a disaster recovery, backup datacenter, but it often sat idle. We wanted to make better use of all of our servers so we’re now leveraging a content delivery network to send traffic to whichever datacenter is geographically closest to the searcher. This allows us to use both datacenters equally and serve our results quickly.

New Hardware

We increased our RAM and CPU resources by five times. We have room to grow and to roll out more features.

Upgraded Software

We’re now on Red Hat 6 and Cloudera 4.

Speed, Speed, Speed

We’re always working to improve the speed of our search results. We changed some of our caching rules. We also started to leverage Nginx (a free, open-source, high-performance HTTP server).

Features

• We added alerts to the Admin Center to communicate maintenance windows or other timely content with you.
• Searchers can see keyword-scoped results for collections. If you have a collection below three folder levels deep, email us and we’ll help you set up a keyword for your collection. 

Chores

• We removed the Hosted Sitemap feature.

Fixes

• We now show dates for RSS news items on each customer’s search results page only.
• We fixed a bug which caused highlighted terms on results pages to omit trailing spaces.
• We fixed a bug on how “site:” operators retrieve results.