You know what makes Google awesome? Their search algorithm is pretty darn smart. You know what makes DOMZ awesome? Every stinking link on there has been verified by a real, honest-to-goodness human being. You know what sucks about site search on most websites, even when they’re running a Google custom search? The only time a human ever looks at the search is when they are actually using it to find something.

This is where a curated site search comes in.

When I say curated, I mean it in much the same way a museum curator takes care of the displays, carefully selecting the pieces to display and updating things as new events and collections are integrated or moved out of public display. Think about it, if you went to a site looking for glasses for your cat and did a search saying “Siamese cat glasses,” wouldn’t it be awesome if, right above all the standard mediocre search results, you got a little bit of content saying “we’ve got glasses that will look great on your Siamese cat?”

Of course it would.

The benefit of this is that you have a better understanding of what a person is looking for than a computer ever will. Why? Two reasons, really. First is because you are a person and, I suspect, you have done searches for things before. Second, no matter how good the crawler is that indexes your site, you have access to your analytics, which means you know what people are searching for. (You’re running analytics, right?)

An example of how this works can be found on the HP site. Below is a screencap of what their search looks like if you search for TouchSmart. (I picked that term because it is their current ad and I knew I would get something good. Color me sneaky.) You’ll note they have a list of search results on the screen, but the very first thing to come up is a link straight to the TouchSmart product information.

HP Curated Search Content

Pretty sweet, right?

Okay, maybe looking at a computer search page doesn’t get you all revved up and ready for action, but imagine if that image were your Siamese cat in need of glasses. Now we’re talking turkey, right?

That cat needs some glasses

This doesn’t do anyone any good if it doesn’t do anyone any good, right?

Absolutely.

What?

The long and short of it all is, by curating content for commonly searched items on your site, you make the information/product/widget/catglasses more findable. This means you are more likely to have conversions from site visitor to customer. Benefit to your customer: ease of use. Benefit to you: more business. Stick that in your ROI pipe and smoke it, Mr. Executive.

In the end, everyone wins when things are easier to find. Since so many users are search-centric, you can serve them well by anticipating the searches they are going to perform and give them the info you know they want up front. This front-loading of work helps to provide a clear signpost for users to do what they were at your site to do: make with the business with you. In short, if you are running a site search for your users you should consider curated content to provide for common searches and make the web a better place.