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About Search

With MadCap Feedback, you can determine how readers are using search in your online output. This helps you answer questions such as: What are they looking for? What are they finding? And more importantly, what are they unable to find? You can use Feedback Explorer to view all used search phrases, as well as searches where no results were returned to the user.

Viewing used search phrases You can see statistics on all search phrases used, including the number of searches performed for each term and the number of results returned for users each time. This lets you know the information that users are seeking most often. You can then make the necessary adjustments to your project, such as adding more details to the appropriate topics. See Viewing Used Search Phrases.
Viewing searches without results You can see statistics on the search phrases for which users did not find results, including the number of searches performed for each term. See Viewing Searches Without Results.
Creating synonyms If users enter search phrases in your online output and those phrases are not returning results, this does not need to be the end of the story. You can make improvements to your output so that, in the future, users are able to find the search results they need. One way to make an enhancement is to add the information that your users are looking for (if that information does not yet exist in your Flare project). Another way to enhance your output is to create synonyms for search phrases. See Creating Synonyms to Enhance Search Results.

You can create synonyms within the Flare project or within Feedback Explorer. It is not mandatory that you have MadCap Feedback in order to use synonyms in Flare output, but using MadCap Feedback makes it much easier to determine which words require synonyms based on the search results of your users. Using Feedback Explorer to create synonyms is appealing because the synonyms become immediately available for users searching in your output (without needing to republish the output). Be aware, however, that creating synonyms in Feedback Explorer works for the Feedback output as long as you continue to publish output to the same server. If you create synonyms in Feedback Explorer, it is recommended that you also create those synonyms at the source (i.e., within the Flare project), in case you ever publish to a different server. The easiest way to do this is to export your synonyms to that Flare project. See Exporting Synonyms.

example

Let's say that you view search keyword results from your users and find that many are entering the search term "sofa." Unfortunately, you have not used that word in your project, so users are unable to find the topics that they need. However, you have used a similar word, "couch." Therefore, in the Synonyms Editor, you enter "couch" as a synonym for "sofa." The next time a reader enters "sofa" as a search keyword, topics containing the word "couch" will be returned in the results.
Resetting search phrase counts When you view search phrases used by readers, one of the columns in the window pane displays the view count. You can reset the search phrase count so that the counter starts over at 0. See Resetting Search Phrase Counts.

Note: This feature is available if you are generating DotNet Help, WebHelp, or WebHelp Plus output formats only. It is not available for Microsoft HTML Help output.