Recap of Social Digital Search Webinar

Oct 14, 2014

Content is no longer limited to .gov sites. As mentioned in a recent blog post, Sharing is Caring, Adding Social Media Accounts to Search, DigitalGov Search uses Flickr, Instagram, and YouTube to populate image and video search results.

On September 30, 2014, I presented with Justin Herman from the Social Media Community of Practice about:

  • What DigitalGov Search is
  • How it integrates social image and video search
  • How search analytics can help social media managers better understand their customers’ needs

If you weren’t able to join us, you can download the slides or view the 30 minute webinar on YouTube.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e2Mb8NlTAQ&w=600]

When DigitalGov Search first started in 2000, it was for a single goverment site, USA.gov, back when it was known as FirstGov.gov. From that seed, DigitalGov Search has grown tremendously over the past 14 years and now powers the search box on 1,500 government websites.

Anyone with a .gov or .mil email address can sign-up for a free account. With an account you have access to the Admin Center where you can customize your search results page and see real-time analytics. Activating DigitalGov Search only requires a few lines of code. We’ll provide results from all your public-facing Web pages on any domains.

We let you bring all your content together seamlessly in one place.

Once you’ve created an account in the Admin Center you can choose to display image and video results from Flickr, Instagram, and YouTube in addition to your chosen domain(s).

You can also choose to display news results from Twitter, jobs results from USAJobs or NeoGov, notices and rules from the Federal Register, and health topics from MedlinePlus.

Using APIs, we automatically index your content once we know your username. For USAJobs and the Federal Register, the results are limited to the designated federal agency.

Using Search Analytics to Understand Customers’ Needs

For social media managers, it is important to know what people are searching for on your site.

By accessing search analytics through our Admin Center, you can use citizens’ search terms to shape the terminology you use on your site and in your social media outreach. Look through the top and trending search terms. Once you’ve found these terms, dive deeper to discover why those are your top or trending terms. Is it the top term because that is one of the terms which has the most content? Or, are searchers unable to find the information they are looking for? Perhaps there is a trending news item like a new program or natural emergency that needs to be addressed.

The available data in the Admin Center can tangibly shape your social media outreach by integrating search data to make better programs you can put data into action.

Oct 14, 2014