Customer Story – Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania
Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania: Improving the Search Experience Across a Multi-Campus Website with Cludo
Problem
Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania’s website search was working against its visitors: surfacing outdated events, ranking old news above academic programs, and leaving students, faculty, and staff unable to find what they needed.
Needs
After Commonwealth consolidated three campus websites into a single digital presence, information that once lived across separate sites had to coexist within one structure spanning academics, admissions, student services, athletics, and more. They needed a search that could handle the added complexity and wanted an experience that would enable continuous optimization of the experience.
Solution
Commonwealth partnered with Cludo to build a smarter, more robust experience using both AI Search and AI Summary, helping visitors quickly find relevant content across campuses while turning search insights into ongoing content strategy.
Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania serves students across its Bloomsburg, Lock Haven, and Mansfield campuses, bringing together multiple institutions under a single university experience. With a diverse audience that includes prospective students, current students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community members, the university’s website plays a critical role in connecting people with information.
“The website is one of the primary ways people interact with us,” says Stephen Filipiak, Associate Director of Web & Digital Strategy. “It’s the front door for prospective students exploring admissions, current students accessing services, faculty and staff finding resources, and alumni staying connected with athletics and campus news. It’s a critical self-service resource that helps people quickly find what they need while giving them a sense of the overall CU experience.”
The Challenge: CMS Search Wasn’t Enough
As Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania integrated three campuses into a single digital presence, the university faced a major increase in content complexity. Information that once lived across separate sites now had to coexist in one structure, spanning academics, admissions, student services, athletics, and more.
Through this shift, they found their existing CMS search struggled to keep up. Outdated events surfaced above current ones. Older news articles ranked higher than academic program pages. And for a multi-campus institution, even straightforward searches like “campus life” created ranking problems with no clean answer.
As frustration grew, it became clear the issue wasn’t just navigation… it was discovery.
“There was a lot of desire among not just the web team, but a lot of people at the university — they were coming to the site and they couldn’t find what they were looking for,” Filipiak recalls.
The team knew basic keyword matching wasn’t going to cut it, so they partnered with Cludo to improve search and content discovery.
Improving Content Discovery with Cludo
Commonwealth partnered with Cludo to create a more intelligent and flexible search experience, while gaining deeper insight into how users were navigating its newly unified website.
Rather than relying on conventional keyword-based search, Cludo allowed the team to actively shape and refine search results based on user intent and institutional priorities.
With Cludo, Commonwealth was able to:
- Improve search performance and prioritize current, high-value content such as academic programs over outdated or lower-relevance pages
- Promote key resources to ensure important information surfaced consistently across campuses
- Boost underperforming but critical pages to improve visibility where it mattered most
- Identify content gaps by analyzing unanswered or low-performing queries
- Continuously refine the experience using search analytics like query trends and click behavior
- Customize the UI of the SERP to create a more enhanced user experience on top of the improved results.
One of the most impactful tools was the banner feature—a simple but elegant fix for one of the trickier challenges of running a multi-campus website. Rather than forcing one campus to rank above the others, Commonwealth could surface a unified callout at the top that gave users a clear entry point without leaving anyone out.
Banner for “residence life” within Commonwealth’s search results
The Impact: Less Noise, Smarter Content
Since implementing Cludo, Commonwealth has gained a clearer view of user intent while reducing search-related friction across its website.
Take scholarships. Recurring searches told the team that students were actively looking for financial aid information, but weren’t finding satisfying answers. That single insight sparked a broader conversation about building a dedicated affordability page, one that packages scholarship information with financial messaging designed to address the real question behind the search.
It’s exactly the kind of signal that search analytics are built to surface.
“Looking at the search analytics has been really great because it reveals the questions people are trying to get answered — and that might differ from how we think about content,” Filipiak says. “We might think something’s really important, but if we look at the analytics, we see what’s actually going on behind the scenes.”
Improvements to search have also translated into something simpler but equally meaningful: fewer complaints.
“In a lot of ways, it’s not hearing from faculty and staff,” Filipiak says. “We used to hear a lot that they couldn’t find things. Now? They’re not complaining.”
For the web team, fewer complaints became one of the clearest indicators that the search experience was working.
Looking Ahead: Meeting Evolving Expectations with AI
As user expectations continue to evolve, Commonwealth has added Cludo’s AI Summary to their search experience. For the university, it’s about staying aligned with how people expect to find information.
“That ‘answer first’ experience is helpful because it’s how people are searching — it’s how they’re looking at Google, how they’re trying to find things on other platforms,” Filipiak says. “Having something like that shows that we’re not only relevant, but we’re also trying to help give them what they’re looking for.”
AI Summary in action on Commonwealth’s site
In a higher education landscape where every digital touchpoint matters, AI Summary is one more way to reduce friction and help users find information in the format they’re increasingly expecting.
Rethinking the Role of Search
For Commonwealth, the value of search extends well beyond helping users find information. It provides actionable insight that shapes content strategy and helps the university better serve everyone who depends on its website. When evaluating search solutions, Commonwealth encourages other institutions to look beyond rankings and results pages.
“Search can often be overlooked when it comes to the website. Don’t just evaluate search based on how well results are showing up. Look for a solution that helps you understand user-behavior — and gives you the tools available to continuously improve that experience.”
For higher education institutions navigating complex configurations and website redesigns, the right search solution can turn that challenge into clarity.
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