Site search on municipal websites has a reputation, and it is deserved. Search for a common term and you get nothing, or forty results ordered by no discernible logic, or results that exclude the documents entirely. Residents learn that the search box does not work, stop using it, and call instead.
Illustration with invented content.
What good municipal search does differently
- Typos forgivenRecyling still finds recycling
- Documents includedPDFs are results, not a separate silo
- Tasks firstThe things residents ask for most come back first
What residents get
People type quickly on phones and they do not know your vocabulary. Search that only matches exact strings fails the residents who most need help, and sends them to the telephone instead.
The answer to a resident question is as often a PDF as a page. Splitting documents into their own search means half the site is effectively invisible to anyone who does not already know where to look.
Ranking by recency means an old page about a task loses to a news item that happens to mention it. Ranking by what residents actually come for puts the pay, apply and find pages where they belong.
The structure of the municipality is an administrative fact, not a navigation aid. Good search means a resident never has to learn it to get something done.
What staff get
Search terms are the one place residents tell you, in their own words, what they came for. Ten minutes reading that list is worth more than most content audits.
Residents say "dump sticker" and the site says "transfer station permit". A synonym maps one to the other, so nobody has to learn the official vocabulary to get an answer.
There is no index to rebuild and no step to remember. What you published this morning is findable this morning.
A search that returns nothing is a resident who left without an answer, and it is normally invisible. Recording those is how the missing page gets written.
Why this one matters most
- On most municipal sites, search is the second thing a resident does after the homepage fails them. If it fails too, the phone rings
- Search reads the text inside documents, so a form can be found by a phrase printed on it
- The search box is on every page, at a size that can be found without hunting for it
Included in every TownFront site
This is part of the core product, not an add-on module. Every TownFront website includes it, and it is built to the same standard as the rest of the site: fast on an ordinary phone connection, navigable by keyboard, readable by a screen reader, and maintainable by your own staff.
See how this would work for your community. Request a conversation and we will walk through your current site and what changes.
Other capabilities
- Agendas & Minutes
- News & Public Notices
- Events & Meeting Calendar
- Documents
- Forms & Permits
- Departments & Contacts
Search is the navigation
- Results are ranked by date, so old pages win
- The right page loses to a page that merely mentions the word
- Documents do not appear at all
- Residents give up and telephone
- Ranked by what residents actually come for
- Near-misses and plurals still land
- Documents and pages in one list
- The org chart stops being a prerequisite