You added that news is now included. Can you provide a list of everything included in a front-end search please?

Quick update here...

News items are now showing in search results.  We are evaluating the effort to get other types of content to show in the results but for now we have improved the feature to include News.  These items will be tagged as "News" along with the date in the results window.  

I would just like to echo that this is essential for our site! 

For those of you that have implemented the Google Custom Search, can you send me a link to your site? I would like to see how it works. Thanks! 

Hey Everyone,

We are still evaluating if this is something we can get to in 2019.  Right now we do not have it on our roadmap but there is potential that we could get to it towards the tail end of the year if we finish our other commitments as expected.  

Events and news should be included regardless of school year.

Content should only be included if on a page. This includes landing pages.
This helps answer question 1 because it should be determinable which site
the content is on based on which page it is on. The "how" of your question
1 is up to your programming staff. Your engineers should be able to figure
that out.

Thank you,

Raffi

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Raffi Darrow
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Correcting my own comment - where I say (in response to Janet):

Expired content should not appear in the search results, but the Blackbaud administrators (here, I mean the school administrator - the webmaster or the person at a school that works in Blackbaud) should dictate if content is expired or not...etc.

My response to Janet and Anthony on #4 is also sort of confusing. Maybe the solution is that the content types behave differently (to make matters more confusing). Maybe news and announcements are returned even if they are not part of a page, but text boxes, link categories, and other types (a comprehensive list would need to be generated) would not be returned unless they were part of a page. Complicated, I know... but maybe necessary? 

I apologize if I could have just edited my previous comment somehow :-)

Hello everyone, and THANK YOU Blackbaud for hearing our feedback and having this conversation.

I'm new to Blackbaud and k-12 marketing/communications as of just a few months ago, so I apologize if some of my comments seem uninformed.

I just read this thread and have some initial reactions to what was said in the past, and then I will address Anthony's recent comments.

Initial reactions to Janet's original 4 points on 6/20/16:

1. The search results algorithm should privilege primary-site content (www domain) but still display subdomain results.
2. Public VS private. I recommend using a convention that is familiar to everyone already: Google Docs/YouTube privacy settings.
   1. Public, Unlisted, Private.
      1. Public - public and searchable on the web
         Unlisted - public, but does not appear in search results
         Private - users need to be signed in to view content
      2. BLACKBAUD VERSION:
         Public = Published (check mark) and listed (meta robots NOINDEX is unchecked (default)
         Unlisted = Published and unlisted (meta robots NOINDEX is checked)
         Private = Not published (no check mark). Meta robots setting is irrelevant (unless there is an internal Blackbaud search that it should appear in - I'm still new/learning)
3. Expired content should not appear in the search results, but the Blackbaud administrators should dictate if content is expired or not. The search results should display/include even old items if the administrator has not expired the content. The search algorithm should privilege newer content but display older content lower in the results.
4. Search results should return all content types by default. There should be filters (like Amazon departments) which would allow users to filter just news articles, just events, just web pages, etc. This can be achieved by using something like ElasticSearch.

Responses to Anthony's comments on 3/8 (naturally similar)

1. Yes. You will know via the subdomain in most cases. Privilege WWW in the algorithm but still deliver the subdomains. Design on the search results page may help solve this problem as well (perhaps the results for non-prmiary websites have a design element indicating this to the user - color, iconography, etc.).
2. Results should be included. Potentially micro-sites and landing pages could be filtered out using the "Amazon departments" model I mentioned above. Regardless, all "Public" (defined as YouTube would define it) search results would be returned. Blackbaud's job would be to tweak the algorithm so that www results are privileged. In the more rare situation that a school admin wants a landing page or mini/micro-site to appear higher than WWW, they will have to use the "Featured Links" function in Blackbaud search settings.
3. Results should return this new and old content. If old content is still live, that is the responsibility of the school administrator to clean it up. Newer content should be privileged in the algorithm.
4. (4.1 and 4.2)
   1. I would think only content that exists on a page should be included in search results. Unused content that exists as a content type/block should not be returned as it is not technically in use. This might be trickier than I realize, especially when it comes to news and announcement content types? 
   2. I'm mixed on this. I think as long as it is clearly labeled as "last year" it is okay to deliver the results (perhaps even on a separate search results page called "past events" that a user needs to click to view). Obviously new/current events should be heavily privileged in search results.

Regarding Rachel's comment, I agree but would want the results included by default. In fact, couldn't the rule operate off of the existing "Meta Robots" field in the page settings? Is there a time we'd want our pages to appear in Blackbaud's search, but not Google's? If yes, I think the featured page setting in Blackbaud search would be employed.

Thank you all for entertaining the ramblings of a Blackbaud noob, and thank you Blackbaud for listening to your user community, and for making updates!

1. I think search results should be returned from mini-sites as well as
main site.

2. Content on landing pages should be included regardless of where tied. If
a landing page has the content foo and someone searches for foo, it should
be in the results - I don't think there's need to prioritize / distinguish,
but maybe I'm not understanding full ramifications we only have about 3
years of onMessage content.

3. If Podium is no longer supported, I think it makes sense to not search
Podium-only content.

4. I would like to see a filter options users could select to narrow /
exclude expired and previous year content but for it all to show.

--
Graham Getty | Director, Information Systems | St. Albans School | (202)
537-5653 | ggetty@stalbansschool.org

Hi Anthony,

I'm glad to hear that Blackbaud is further considering including other content types in the site search. I hope my response is helpful.

1) Since content is not site specific, if content is public and not expired should it be returned on a search from a mini-site as well as the main site?

We don't have a mini-site set up, but I don't see an issue with content returning from other sites, if they are relevant to the search.

How would we know which site you intend it for without seeing the page on which it is rendered?.

Perhaps there could be a content role that editors could apply to content types so they would publish only in specific places, much like certain content types can be restricted to users?

2) If content created for a landing page isn’t tied to the regular site, what should be considered here?

I don't have a strong opinion on this.

3) What about content that is still public and not expired but it is from a previous iteration of your website(e.g. podium website)?
Would you be willing to go through and expire all that old content so that it is excluded from users discovering it via search?

We are not former podium users, so this doesn't apply to us. However, if there is content that has been expired, if it means changing its status so it does not show up in searches, it seems that this is a necessary and acceptable step.

4) Rules may vary by content type
Should text and list content only be included if on a page? Yes

Should events and news always be included regardless of school year? Yes

Thanks,
Lauren Koppelman
Communications Manager
The Rashi School

(781) 355-7336
lkoppelman@rashi.org
8000 Great Meadow Road
Dedham, MA 02026

To answer (what seem to be the majority of) your concerns about content published to mini-sites, landing pages, and old sites, how about simply including a button in each piece of content published that says, "Allow in search?" If we want the item included, we check it. If we don't, we leave it blank. And yes, that means that  we'll have to go back and select that box for any item that is not already expired that we don't want appearing.

As for your other question re: rules by content type, again we should be allowed to specify for ANY content type if the item should be searchable, regardless of school year. I would much rather the site pull too much information that nothing at all, which is what it is doing now. 

As for calendars, I would say we should be able to specify how many months back and how many months forward we want it to search (i.e. we might want people's search to yield results from 6 months ago but not 2 years ago. Likewise, I want the search to yield 1 year ahead and not more than that). 

Hello Everyone,  

We do monitor this site daily and we did owe an update here much much sooner. These ideas are heard and we really needed to be more open about why we haven't made a change to something that is an obvious pain point, especially when the view from the community is that it should be something quick and easy. If we feel something is a huge change and the community feels differently then we can be more open about that.

The onMessage search mechanism is dependent on a nightly process that generates the html of all published pages for indexing. When a user conducts a front end search, just that html content that was indexed is considered. This request does require a substantial rewrite of the way we are searching content via onMessage.

I am going to include some questions below that reference some of the same questions posted here previously. We aren't yet committing to making this update but we have some questions that need clarification before we can even consider the effort.

1) Since content is not site specific, if content is public and not expired should it be returned on a search from a mini-site as well as the main site?
How would we know which site you intend it for without seeing the page on which it is rendered?.

2) If content created for a landing page isn’t tied to the regular site, what should be considered here?

3) What about content that is still public and not expired but it is from a previous iteration of your website(e.g. podium website)?
Would you be willing to go through and expire all that old content so that it is excluded from users discovering it via search?

4) Rules may vary by content type
Should text and list content only be included if on a page?
Should events and news always be included regardless of school year?

I am looking forward to the feedback and discussion that follows.  

Anthony

This is a great example of why sending ideas to the "ideas portal" makes users feel like they are just being sent off to pasture...a great, implementable idea sits for 2.5 years, despite getting reasonable tractions in terms of votes. 

May we get an update on this- it's a solvable issue that should have been included in the initial onMessage release.

Is this actually ever going to happen? This feature was requested 2.5 years ago with a follow up 2 years ago...

Any idea of when this is planned? I've got parents searching for "Parents Dinner" and the landing page called Parents Dinner is not anywhere in the search results! Yikes. Please.

The limited functionality of the Search feature - and the lack of a functional search history - is disheartening.  The fact that you had a functioning system in Podium and then when you upgraded to OnMessage, it broke... and the issue has been here for two years.  Not encouraging.

Any progress on implementation of a fix or replacement feature?

I would like for this to include videos that are available when the user needs to click the "Load More" button at the bottom of a video gallery page.

Is there an update on this process? Did you get the input you needed? Our school would really like to see a better search function. Our views are in line with most of those expressed already.

The search functionality on Podium was terrific. Can't you just replicate that?? Frankly, I don't understand why that wasn't part of the new platform from the get-go!!

Re your various questions: I think the more thorough, the search, the better!

I would like to be sure this includes CONTENT, WELCOME, NEWS, and SIDEBAR channels from PUSHPAGES in the new search functionailty, as well.

We often need to search through our pushes for certain articles and haven't been able to figure out how to do that other than physically searching through them one by one. A tedious and time-wasting task to be sure, especially since there are times when each template needs to be searched to find what we are looking for.

This search should be available and return content applicable to the constituent that is signed in irregardless of their security access.

Hi Janet. Excited to hear search functionality is being updated! I just wanted to put in my two cents that I think we're focusing on the wrong issues here. The reason for this is that Google Search works perfectly fine for us in regards to finding content. It shows only content that's on our pages (I think anyway), and takes folks right to the content they need. Take the following example: 

In 2014, we wrote an article on Theory of Knowledge, or TOK. 

1. Go to Google.com
2. Type in: cheshire academy tok news
3. The first result takes you directly to the news article so you can read it

Now try this:

1. Go to cheshireacademy.org
2. In the search bar, type in: cheshire academy tok news
3. No results. 
4. Try a bunch of different keywords: (TOK, theory of, Chip Boyd, etc)
5. No results
6. Navigate to: http://www.cheshireacademy.org/Page/About/News--Publications and see that the 2014 news content is on the page as an option. 

In 2016, we wrote an article about David Mathisson, titled "A Novel Affair."

1. Go to cheshireacademy.org
2. In the search bar, type in David Mathisson
3. No results
4. Type in "A Novel Affair"
5. Click on the news page, which appears
6. You are taken not to the article, but to the news archive, where you have to use Ctrl + F to find what you need. 

Since these kinds of results are already available via Google, why not just make it so the OnMessage website search functionality works similarly? 

-------------

1) Since content is not organized by site, what are the consequences if public content for a mini-site is returned on the main site detail page? This would definitely be irritating, but I guess is better than the alternative. 

2) What about content that is being created for a site not yet launched? can you keep it not-public to keep it out of search results? This would be nice-- keeping something not public until you're ready!

3) Are you willing to expire old public content for a site no longer used to keep that content out of search? Yes; I would actually love it if there were better content management tools for OnMessage content. If content could have "pending review" or "archived" that would be wonderful, and would allow up to move pending review to the top of the page and archived to the bottom without relying on naming conventions (starting categories with Z or !!)

4) Should we limit the public content returned to just items in those categories defined on the News Archive page settings for example?   Yes. OR limit to return results of all items in a category that is currently associated with a public page? Again, yes, but results would need to take folks directly to the thing they are looking for, NOT the archive page, but the exact article they are looking for