Most Popular Searches on the CSU, Chico Website

An analysis of the most commonly searched for terms on the CSU, Chico Web site, 2003 and 2006.

Part 4 in a series of analyses of the CSU, Chico home page and website that I conducted in 2003 and then repeated in 2006.

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2003

Grouped and Ranked Search Terms

The following list groups similar search terms from the raw data. Terms such as "map", "campus map", and "map of campus" are grouped together to give a clearer picture of the true ranking of search terms.

Rank	Term	Total	Percent
1	enter search term	3132	4.81%
2	campus map	1695	2.60%
3	portal	1534	2.36%
4	financial aid	1441	2.21%
5	as bookstore	1047	1.61%
6	jobs	1030	1.58%
7	transcripts	818	1.26%
8	webct	722	1.11%
9	athletics	610	0.94%
10	housing	574	0.88%
11	tracs	469	0.72%
12	student employment	447	0.69%
13	class schedule	424	0.65%
14	tuition	421	0.65%
15	email	373	0.57%
16	parking	356	0.55%
17	orion	354	0.54%
18	textlink	287	0.44%
19	human resources	239	0.37%
20	cave	235	0.36%
21	grades	209	0.32%
22	health center	181	0.28%
23	calendar	176	0.27%
24	wildcat card	169	0.26%
25	study abroad	167	0.26%
26	library	161	0.25%
27	nursing	156	0.24%
28	sororities	151	0.23%
29	cns	147	0.23%
30	career planning and placement center	138	0.21%
31	academic calendar	134	0.21%
32	celt	133	0.20%
33	records and registration	132	0.20%
34	associated students	118	0.18%
35	user services	116	0.18%
36	seo	113	0.17%
37	writing center	107	0.16%
38	sports	101	0.16%
39	as presents	94	0.14%
40	getting connected	89	0.14%
41	work study	87	0.13%
42	open classes	82	0.13%
43	geography	77	0.12%
44	address	76	0.12%
45	application	75	0.12%
46	open university	73	0.11%
47	scholarships	72	0.11%
48	regional and continuing education	70	0.11%
49	directions	68	0.10%
50	adventure outings	65	0.10%
51	student computing	65	0.10%
52	fraternities	62	0.10%
53	catalog	60	0.09%
54	syllabus	59	0.09%
55	clubs	57	0.09%
56	fall 2003	54	0.08%
57	whitney hall	54	0.08%

These statistics are very revealing.

First of all, they tell us that the link to the Portal is not seen by students, even though it is right next to the search box.

Further, they tell us that the lack of links to "financial aid" and "campus map" on the home page are a problem for many students. These would be prime additions to the home page in a redesign.

"Employment", "jobs", "human resources", etc., are also popular, indicating that links to jobs and employment might not be amiss on the home page. Many university sites do this, and a few even do it well.

Also, the fact that "enter search term" every other term says that consideration should be given to adding a single line of JavaScript code that would remove that text as soon as the user clicked in the search field.

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2006
I repeated the analysis in 2006, the results of which are below.

Rank	Search Term	Total	Percent
1	campus map	6530	2.24%
2	transcripts	5484	1.89%
3	financial aid	4701	1.62%
4	housing	4673	1.61%
5	jobs	4384	1.51%
6	academic calendar	3545	1.22%
7	webct	3246	1.12%
8	tuition	3144	1.08%
9	health center	3039	1.04%
10	final exam schedule	2881	0.99%
11	class schedule	2870	0.99%
12	career planning and placement center	2679	0.92%
13	calendar	2661	0.91%
14	athletics	2429	0.84%
15	as bookstore	2235	0.77%
16	study abroad	1994	0.69%
17	nursing	1992	0.68%
18	summer orientation	1956	0.67%
19	portal	1929	0.66%
20	orion	1802	0.62%
21	library	1681	0.58%
22	graduation	1668	0.57%
23	cave	1572	0.54%
24	records and registration	1529	0.53%
25	human resources	1508	0.52%
26	student employment	1486	0.51%
27	orientation	1398	0.48%
28	parking	1381	0.47%
29	as	1294	0.44%
30	catalog	1224	0.42%
31	general education	1109	0.38%
32	add/drop	1058	0.36%
33	eop	1029	0.35%
34	badm 101	1018	0.35%
35	admissions	970	0.33%
36	gpa calculator	952	0.33%
37	theme	877	0.30%
38	upward bound	839	0.29%
39	photos	755	0.26%
40	rec sports	743	0.26%
41	geography	722	0.25%
42	internship office	700	0.24%
43	logo	695	0.24%
44	peoplesoft	686	0.24%
45	bmu	645	0.22%
46	textlink	595	0.20%
47	intramural sports	591	0.20%
48	box office	547	0.19%
49	facilities management services	546	0.19%
50	psychology	531	0.18%
51	commencement	513	0.18%
52	research foundation	512	0.18%
53	scholarships	504	0.17%
54	university village	504	0.17%
55	sap	501	0.17%
56	regional and continuing education	497	0.17%
57	baseball	489	0.17%

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Comparison

Obviously, there were several changes in relative search popularity from 2003 to 2006, but no clear pattern is apparent.

Despite adding a link to Campus Map on the home page, "campus map" (or similar terms) is still the most popular search term. I attribute this to the fact that the link on the home page was essentially added as an afterthought in the footer of the page where it is not very visible.

The drop in "email" from 15th to 95th can probably be attributed to the change in the prominance of the email links on the home page. Similarly, the drop of "grades" from 21st to 87th is probably due to the fact that grades are easily accessible via the portal now, and most students are aware of that fact.

The biggest success story of the 2003 redesign was in adding a single line of JavaScript to the search box so that when a user clicked in the box, the words "enter search term" disappeared, resulting in removing "enter search term" from the top 100 search terms altogether.

The second biggest success story was changing the name of the link to the portal from "Chico State Connection" to "Portal", which is what everyone was calling it anyway. That moved searches for the portal from 2nd most popular to 19th.

Some unexplainable changes include the drop of "student employment" from 12th to 26th, the rise of "career planning and placement center" from 30th to 12th, the rise of academic calendar from 31st to 6th, the rise of "catalog" from 53rd to 30th, and drops in "user services", "sports", "getting connected", "work study", "open university", and several others.

Rank 2003	Rank 2006	Term
1		enter search term
2	1	campus map
3	19	portal
4	3	financial aid
5	15	as bookstore
6	5	jobs
7	2	transcripts
8	7	webct
9	14	athletics
10	4	housing
11		tracs
12	26	student employment
13	11	class schedule
14	8	tuition
15	95	email
16	28	parking
17	20	orion
18	46	textlink
19	25	human resources
20	23	cave
21	87	grades
22	9	health center
23		calendar
24	68	wildcat card
25	16	study abroad
26	21	library
27	17	nursing
28	63	sororities
29		cns
30	12	career planning and placement center
31	6	academic calendar
32		celt
33	24	records and registration
34	29	associated students
35	65	user services
36	59	seo
37		writing center
38	58	sports
39	60	as presents
40	91	getting connected
41	80	work study
42		open classes
43	41	geography
44	84	address
45		application
46	93	open university
47	53	scholarships
48	56	regional and continuing education
49		directions
50	62	adventure outings
51		student computing
52		fraternities
53	30	catalog
54		syllabus
55	72	clubs
56		fall 2003
57		whitney hall

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Summary

Overall, most terms that were popular in 2003 remained popular in 2006. Of the top ten terms in 2003, six were still in the top ten three years later.

Of the most popular search terms, virtually all of the top search terms appear to come from the current student audience group. Some terms (e.g., jobs, parking, financial aid, etc.) might also be used by other audience groups (community, staff, potential students, etc.), but it is impossible to separate those out accurately.

The table below gives a rough idea of the audience groups that would be most likely to use each search term. This is only my guesstimate, so you might have a different opinion.

Rank	Search Term	Cur. Students	Pros. Students	Alumni	Faculty	Staff	Comm.
1	campus map
2	transcripts
3	financial aid
4	housing
5	jobs
6	academic calendar
7	webct
8	tuition
9	health center
10	final exam schedule
11	class schedule
12	career planning and placement center
13	calendar
14	athletics
15	as bookstore
16	study abroad
17	nursing
18	summer orientation
19	portal
20	orion
21	library
22	graduation
23	cave
24	records and registration
25	human resources
26	student employment
27	orientation
28	parking
29	as
30	catalog
31	general education
32	add/drop
33	eop
34	badm 101
35	admissions
36	gpa calculator
37	theme
38	upward bound
39	photos
40	rec sports
41	geography
42	internship office
43	logo
44	peoplesoft
45	bmu
46	textlink
47	intramural sports
48	box office
49	facilities management services
50	psychology
51	commencement
52	research foundation
53	scholarships
54	university village
55	sap
56	regional and continuing education
57	baseball

Key
stu = current students
ps = potential students
alm = alumni
fac = faculty
stf = staff
com = off-campus community