USA.gov Blog

User data guides what we do at USAGov. Without it, we wouldn’t know what government questions people are searching for. And we wouldn’t know how to design our content to make it easier for people to find and understand the answers.

Take a look at the Top USA.gov Queries from Google in 2019 and compare.

Take a look at the Top Searches on USA.gov in 2019 and compare.

How many people are visiting USA.gov and USA.gov/espanol right now? What kind of devices are they using and what content are they looking for the most? These are all easy-to-answer questions with the USAGov analytics dashboard. It’s open to everyone and provides a snapshot of popular content on our websites and technical and geographical stats about our users. 

When it comes to writing content for the web, we can’t ignore Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It doesn’t matter how great your content is if the user can’t find it quickly. That’s why a good relationship between SEO and content is key to improve content visibility.

Earlier this year, we shared a blog post about our methods for surveying our bilingual email subscribers. We wanted to learn more about our users, their needs and preferences, to serve them better.

For nearly 50 years, USAGov has been working to serve every person and every government agency. Our history has been full of change, and never static as we improve people’s lives by connecting them with the government services and information they need.

One of the 2018 goals for our email outreach efforts was to learn more about our audience. Though in the past we had performed different exercises to do so -- email-level data analysis, content testing, and persona development to name a few -- we decided nothing beats being able to ask questions directly to our subscribers.

USAGov and USAGov en Español offer a wide range of government information and services organized by topics to make it easy for people to find what they’re looking for. But navigating through different sections within our sites could be challenging and overwhelming for our visitors, especially first-time users.

The Emerging Leaders Program (ELP) at GSA is a two-year Pathways program for recent graduates to transition from college to a career in government. Each participant rotates through up to seven different offices within the agency, working closely with team members and learning about the work before being permanently placed. The program offers networking opportunities, in-depth trainings on technical and leadership skills, and previews a variety of career tracks.