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JMP Resources Question from a Customer

I received this question from a customer. Interested in your thoughts on this topic.

 

"Documentation of tools and scripts and how to use them. Essentially, when I search google for SAS questions, one of the first few items is usually the online documentation, but when I do the same for JMP, I usually get directed to the community, but not any official JMP documentation. Its also hard to know how to find all the different options for JSL commands."

 

@Jeff_Perkinson 

Re: JMP Resources Question from a Customer

We don't have a lot (none really) of control over what Google chooses to rank for any of our resources. I've noticed the same thing. We work to make sure our doc is well organized for indexing and ranking by Google but beyond that it does seem that Google prefers posts from the Community.

 

@JohnMosier, do you have any comment? 

Re: JMP Resources Question from a Customer

 

I usually add the word "documentation" or "help" to my searches when I want the doc's to show up first. That makes sure the support stuff shows up first.  

 

Re: JMP Resources Question from a Customer

I would be interested to know what the customer is looking for when using Google, i.e. a how-to question, JSL syntax, etc.

 

I have found the Community to be a great place to have how-to questions answered. So, if the customer is looking for those type of questions, then having Community links surfaced in the search results is good.

 

However, if I want to know about JSL syntax or other basics, then I would agree that other sources such as the online help or scripting index are better. However, I would go directly to those sources rather than perform a search.

Re: JMP Resources Question from a Customer

I would say that in general, the Community has a lot going for it from an SEO perspective.  Examples:  the content is constantly being updated (Google likes fresh content), a lot of the content is written and vetted by users (Google values user generated content), all the pages are responsive (i.e. they look good on mobile, also a ranking factor — not true of many of the help pages, though we’re working on that), etc.   

 

Having said that, for most JMP-specific searches, I’d be surprised if a user had to scroll too far down the first page of search results to find the help pages.  Happy to look into specific search queries to see if something is significantly out of whack. 

Re: JMP Resources Question from a Customer

Just for reference, according to Google Search Console, for Google searches containing "jmp" in 2019, pages in the Community received 292k impressions and 40.2k clicks;  pages containing /support/help/ (the documentation pages) received 482k impressions and 70.9k clicks. 

Re: JMP Resources Question from a Customer

Thanks everyone!  This is really good information for the customer & for future reference!

 

Re: JMP Resources Question from a Customer

Another aspect comes into my mind. The online help is usually accessed from within JMP so no search - no track. In addition google remembers where you are more often. So if you re reading community posts from time to time (if you do not have bookmarked I often just type community and hit return as it populates the last found link I often used) it is more likely that a search will push up community links rather than documentation links.

 

In addition I believe we have a special hidden feature activated when a discussion thread has a success checkmark as they pop up even higher than other related threads. SAS documentation has a yearlong history and very many statistical topic searches are on either Minitab or SAS (or wikipedia) links. This might also add to that. 

 

And we actively push people to the community rather than the documentation, at least I do;)

Re: JMP Resources Question from a Customer

I think that our documentation is generally outstanding. We invested heavily in developing and maintaining it. It is a vital resource. I do not hesitate to point to relevant sections when appropriate. Many users do not know JMP and are looking for a solution. That shallow approach is fine (just get it done) but they do not necessarily learn anything (mastering JMP and making it a personal tool). If they do not learn JMP, then we don't have a very deep hook in them.

 

I don't feel that I should provide lengthy, in-depth explanations in a discussion when it is covered very well in our documentation.

 

Bump.

Re: JMP Resources Question from a Customer

Quick clarification regarding click data I cited earlier:  Google hides the majority of query-specific search data for privacy reasons.  This means we can associate specific queries (like "jmp ...") with only a fraction of our organic traffic.  Actual traffic arriving from "jmp" queries to both the Community and help pages is likely orders of magnitude larger than the 40.2k clicks and 70.9k clicks repsectively I mentioned earlier.  Total organic clicks (from ALL queries) to the Community and help pages were very similar in 2019: 1.14M and 1.13M respectively (source: Google Search Console).