Search

Australian Government departments and agencies place increasing amounts of information on their websites and intranets. As the volume of material increases, the need for effective search facilities to help users locate specific information on these sites similarly increases.

Providing an effective search facility on websites, extranets or intranets involves more than just installing a search engine package 'out of the box'. Effective search facilities match the site they support and the site's users. They are tested with real content and users and refined as appropriate. A search facility should be able to give priority to important pages such as key pages and policy documents.

Enterprise search engines make use of links, anchor text and URL structure used by the leading public search engines to rank important resources above those which are merely relevant. By improving site structure, page markup, and interlinking, and using simple URLs and descriptive anchor text, search results from the public internet search engines (eg Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft Live) can be improved and will result in improved site-search results.

Why Must I?

There are no mandatory Australian Government requirements for this topic.

How Do I?

• Implementing an Effective Website Search Facility (AGIMO, Better Practice Checklist)

The australia.gov.au website makes its Government Search Service available to other Australian Government agencies at no cost. The Culture and Recreation Portal and Education Network Australia offer similar search services for their sector.

Who Can Help?

For queries and assistance contact:

Better Practice
Australian Government Information Management Office
Department of Finance and Deregulation
better.practice@finance.gov.au

To find out more about the australia.gov.au Government Search Service contact agencysearch@finance.gov.au.