USASearch: Enhancing Your Website's Search

On-Demand Webinar

NOTE: Large files will take more time to download

• Webinar recording: USASearch Affiliate Program (WMV, 48 MB, 60 minutes, July 2011)
• Presentation slides: USASearch Affiliate Program (PDF, 961 KB, 24 pages, July 2011)
• Transcript: USASearch Affiliate Program (PDF, 28.7 KB, 7 pages, July 2011)

Description

We all want our website visitors to be able to grab the information they need and go. Creating such an experience on your website requires an optimal search experience. This webinar will discuss how to leverage the free USASearch Program to enhance your current web site search. Getting search right is a difficult challenge, and the USASearch Program makes it easy for you to offer a commercial-grade search experience on any government site at no cost. USASearch delivers fast and relevant search results. It also provides robust search analytics and flexible options—from turnkey, hosted search to an API—that allow you fully customize the search for your site.

What You'll Learn

• Understand the importance of a fast and relevant web site search
• Develop money saving strategies by using the USASearch Program's free, commercial grade site search
• Learn how to leverage USASearch Affiliates Program features such as Type Ahead Search, Boosted Content, and Search Analytic

About the Presenters

Ammie Farraj Feijoo is the Deputy Program Manager of the U.S. General Services Administration’s USASearch Program. Ammie has worked for more than 10 years to improve access to information on the web with an emphasis on the organization of information, taxonomies, and search. She currently manages the U.S. government’s official search engine on USA.gov and GobiernoUSA.gov. She also oversees the USASearch Affiliate Program, which provides any federal, state, local, tribal, or territorial government agency with hosted site search at no cost.

Prior to joining the General Services Administration, Ammie worked at the Congressional Research Service (CRS), Library of Congress, where she was responsible for the business implementation of the search system on CRS.gov. Before CRS, she was the Director of Library Services at Advocates for Youth, where she managed the organization’s library and led the development of its targeted web channels for young people, parents, youth-serving professionals, and the entertainment industry.

Ammie holds a B.S. in Sociology from the Pennsylvania State University and a Master of Library Science from the University of Maryland.

Jay Virdy has been designing and developing search engines since 1995. He was the co-founder and CEO of the Web's first local search engine called LocalEyes, which was acquired by AOL in 2000. At AOL, Jay built and led an agile team of search engineers and data experts to launch search powered services, SEO analytics tools, and the flagship AOL Search engine. In 2007, Jay was co-founder and CEO of Summize, a ground-breaking, real-time search engine which reshaped the search industry. Summize was acquired by Twitter and renamed Twitter Search in 2008. Today Twitter Search serves more than 600 million requests per day. Jay now brings his entrepreneurial experience to help the government innovate in the search space using modern agile processes to better serve citizens.
 

Erik Arnold has over 15 years of experience in the search industry, divided uniquely between both web and enterprise search. He is the director of Adhere Solutions, a consulting firm that advises companies on improving their web and enterprise search systems as well as the principals of search engine optimization. Prior to Adhere, Erik served as a subject matter expert for a government consulting company where he primarily worked with the House of Representatives and the USA.gov Web portal. He started his career at Lycos, one of the first Internet search engines, where he was a product marketing manager. Erik then moved to NBCi search engine (Snap.com) where he served as business development manager.