Sharing is Caring, Adding Social Media Accounts to Search

Content is no longer limited to your .gov website. Social media accounts also contain a treasure trove of information relevant to your site’s visitors. Keeping that in mind, DigitalGov Search has worked to bring all your content, wherever it is, to your search results.

Finding something you didn’t know you were looking for is the best form of discovery, so make sure there are ample opportunities to find your content in all its forms. Searchers expect to see more than a list of links on your site. They expect to see instant answers to their questions.

Wow Your Site’s Visitors with Your Pictures

We have recently added Instagram to our collection of social media accounts that can populate search results. Instagram pictures can now be seen either by searchers who do not have Instagram accounts, or by those who do not follow your site. Everyone can access the pictures.

Image searches on sites that use DigitalGov Search to power their search box show both Flickr and Instagram accounts (if you have duplicate content, there’s no need to show both). Once integrated into search results, images from your social media accounts have greater visibility and searchers can discover a picture with a single query.

Bring It All Together

Searchers see better results when content from all your social media accounts are in one place. In addition to Instagram and Flickr, Twitter and YouTube are also available. Video searches include YouTube videos and relevant tweets appear in searches on newsworthy topics.

Did you know that one of the most common search queries is jobs? We see it across almost all sites. So, in order to present the best results for searchers, we display open positions from USAJobs. Searchers might not be familiar with USAJobs, so we bring the search results to them. Searching for jobs on TSA.gov will reveal openings across the country, with results closest to the searcher’s geographical location shown first.

Other modules from DigitalGov Search are Federal Register documents and MedlinePlus health information. Results from the National Library of Medicine provide instant answers for health related questions, and can help searchers locate open clinical trials. For regulatory agencies, Federal Register documents let searchers know about possible changes to rules.

By bringing together all your content, you can ensure that your site’s visitors have a pleasant search experience.