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The seasonality of search demonstrated

Rich Wiggins has published details on seasonal search patterns at a large university. To quote:

I spent some time on Saturday reviewing the past year of search queries performed at MSU.edu, the web site of my employer, Michigan State University. It proved a useful way to distract myself while my co-author's alma mater destroyed my Spartans in football.

For quite some time, I've known how seasons affect search needs among an academic institution's searchers. After some seat-of-the-pants manual clustering of queries by topic, the seasonality of search seems to be validated once more. I've color-coded the clusters in spreadsheet snippet below.

Posted by jamesr on October 12, 2006 08:00 PM
Categories: Search tools