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Introduction to Search

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Newcastle University uses a Google Search Appliance (GSA) to search its website.  This  means our search works in a very similar way to ‘big’ Google.

The main difference is that ours is set to focus in on http://www.ncl.ac.uk and the sites that are part of it.

Newcastle University IT (NUIT) Service and Corporate Web Development manage the GSA.  But it’s  your web content that determines where your site appears in  search results.

Search topics

We’re going to use this blog to help you understand how search engines work and how you can improve the ‘findability’ of your website.

There’ll be hints on how to improve your web copy on your site to raise its visibility in search results.

We’ll also look at the popular search terms on our website and see what it tells us about our choice of language online as well as which of our content is most important to our users.

We’ll provide case studies to highlight success stories and share insights into how ‘big’ Google works.

Take a look at the advice on our website (University Login required).

Suggest a topic

If there’s a topic you’d like us to cover – get in touch via the comments or via our website (University Login required).

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Introduction to Go Mobile

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The Newcastle University website was designed to be viewed on standard desktop monitors. Yet in 2014 25% of global web traffic comes from mobile devices. Our website analytics show that visits to our site reflect this trend, with 28% of traffic coming from mobile devices.

The Go Mobile programme is an exciting mission to give our users what they need – high quality web content that is mobile responsive.

What we’re doing

We’re making a commitment to improve our web content.

We’re making our sites responsive. Users of tablets, mobiles and desktops see the same website optimised for viewing on their screen.

We’re improving our Content Management System. We have over 20,000 external facing web pages and the systems used to edit and publish them are out of date. We’re moving all our sites into the Terminal 4 Content Management System (T4).

People involved

The Corporate Web Development team are leading this project with the support of the IT Service.

Programme updates on our blog

We’ll be using this blog to provide updates. This could be anything from a key project milestone to a ‘show and tell’ type post on a new responsive feature or design component.

Expect to see blood, sweat, tears and plenty of photos of post it notes as we plan this huge programme of work.

Get in touch

If you have any questions about the project please contact us.

We’ll also be adding project updates to our website (University Login required).

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