September 2023 Newsletter
In case of a temporary lapse in appropriations
Use the search page alert to post a banner on your search results page
In case of a temporary lapse of appropriations, or for any other reason, you can use our Search Page Alert feature to post a banner on your search results page to inform searchers of your website’s status.
Search system will remain operational
In the event of a temporary lapse in appropriations, please note that Search.gov will remain in normal operations and maintenance, including the search engine, hosted search results pages, and the Admin Center. API-driven search results pages on your websites are subject to your agency’s guidance.
Interested in faceted search?
Let’s talk about metadata!
As previously announced, our faceted search capability is now available for our customers using API results, and it will soon become available to those customers using hosted results. If you are interested in using this feature for your website, email us at search@gsa.gov to schedule a call to talk about getting your metadata ready. The sooner you can start including metadata in your page templates, the sooner we can gather it. We will start using it in results matching right away, and your searchers will be able to use it to filter when the interface is ready.
UX panel discussion: seeking participants
Turning search data into real-world changes
Does your team analyze search data from Search.gov or other commercial search tools?
Has your team applied such data to implement real changes on your site?
Are you willing to share your process and lessons learned?
We are partnering with the UX Community of Practice on a webinar panel discussion about turning search data into real-world content improvements. This event will be hosted by the UX Community of Practice leads, David Kaufmann and Katie Chan; and moderated by Dawn McCleskey, Search.gov program manager.
We are currently looking for panel participants or just example experiences that we could share as part of this discussion. The webinar date is still being finalized, possibly early in the new year.
You can join the panel as a speaker, or we can gladly present your story. If you are interested, please contact us at search@gsa.gov. Thank you in advance for your time and enthusiasm for knowledge sharing!
Last call: contacts confirmation
Review/Update Your List of Users
We are conducting a review of our search sites’ authorized users, to be completed by the end of September. Similar to a user recertification process, we ask you to please confirm that the users’ names and email addresses listed on your search site(s) are correct, and if this is not the case, to make any necessary updates.
Like last year, this confirmation process is managed using a Touchpoints form. New this year, the form asks you to indicate for each user listed on your search site whether they are federal employees or contractors.
So far, we have received 75 completed forms so we still have many customers waiting to respond. Thank you to those who have already responded, and to those who haven’t had a chance yet, we ask you to please take a few minutes to fill out this form by September 30.
Thank you in advance for taking the time to help us with this request!
Review and confirm your user list
Release Notes
Want to learn about the latest features, fixes, and focuses of the Search team? We post monthly Release Notes on our website.