Top search queries; best results first

A couple of weeks ago MacUpdate introduced the relevant search (pictured above). It was built to show the best software titles on the first page of results. I've been studying our Google Analytics traffic reports before and after the launch to measure what people are searching for. The following keywords are the most popular searches made on MacUpdate for the month of March.

stuffit, vlc, onyx, firefox, torrent, itunes, ipod, handbrake, flip4mac, ftp, dvd, camino, parallels, limewire, msn, toast, mac the ripper, mactheripper, games, skype, azureus, mplayer, safari, backup, adium, rar, applejack, messenger, quicksilver, p2p, flash, youtube, vlc, vnc, cyberduck, bittorrent, transmission, divx, office, burn, windows media player, superduper, real player, iphoto, pdf (we reviewed the top 200)...

Did the first page of results display the best listings?

By some whim of programming magic, I was impressed to see all of the search terms above, less two (games & bittorrent), displaying the best matches in the top two listings on the first page of results! While this is encouraging to see, it means there is still room for improvement on general terms like "games" or keyword spelling like "bittorrent" where "torrent" might be the better keyword choice (which was actually a more popular choice anyway).

So we've decided to train someone on the secrets of the relevant search, and show them how to help manually optimize the engine to make sure that the searches made on a daily basis are indeed displaying the best results. He'll start working in a couple of weeks, putting in a few hours a day. I'm excited to see how this improves the search even further.

How does searching on MacUpdate compare?

Out of curiousity I wanted to know how much time I'd save by performing searches on MacUpdate in comparison with the other Mac software sites. So I setup a quick test, searching for "itunes" -- a very popular keyword and probably the most popular application ever built by Apple.

Pages scrolled when searching for "itunes" on other sites
Site             Pages
MacUpdate          1
Download.com       1
VT                 2
iusethis           3
Softpedia          4
Tucows             N/A

MacUpdate and Download.com are the two sites that actually list Apple iTunes on the first page of results. All of the other sites require that you scroll past the first page to find what you're looking for. And the biggest surprise of this test was that Tucows doesn't even list iTunes on their site.

How can users help improve relevant searches?

Post search terms in the comments of this blog entry. If a specific term is giving you issues, we want to know about it here. Your help in communicating this to us will result us working to figure out how to continue to optimize the search engine for you. Many of you have already helped us with improvements by posting over 30 comments a few blog posts ago. Thank you!

Stay tuned next week. Page load time of searches is about to be optimized dramatically!