This is where search engine 'best bets' come in. These are a hand-created list of key resources for common queries, and they can dramatically improve the search experience, particularly on information-rich sites such as intranets.

Search engine ‘best bets’ at StepTwo

MSU does this with the web search. If your term is one of the defined keywords then you get a list of official sites. It would be nice if it continued with the real results but there’s an easy link to the google search. I think they’re moving away from the internal search and just have keywords and google. At least as far as I can tell.

Here’s an example search: registrar.

For those implementing library site searches this may come in handy. It helps bring more relevant results to the top for things like checkout books, ill, borrow, renew, etc which may not be the number one result otherwise.

This could also be useful in the OPAC if you keep track of search terms and what books are ultimately put on hold/reserve/recall etc. It would be a bit more difficult for ones where they browse and then go to the stacks. If people are searching for a term some giving up and others finding what they need 5 pages into the results then something like this may be a possible solution. Lots of caveats in the OPAC though.