Search Results
Louis Rosenfeld has a couple of good posts in his Bloug about presenting search results, especially listing out a Best Bets section. I’m not a search engine expert, but I did do a bit of work on the intuit.com search results.
Notice anything? Best Bets maybe? I haven’t had enough time recently to do a follow-up study, but it tested well in usability and I’ve heard positive comments secondhand. It’s good to hear about others emphasizing this approach - seems like one of those obvious things that isn’t implemented very often.
Other improvements to searching? How about improving the interaction between search results and browse categories - two alternate ways of getting to the same information. It’s been done since Yahoo, and Google does a good job of highlighting categories on a more general search as well, but still, you still don’t see it done often on sites that aren’t internet search engines. It’s especially bad because sites that own the final searched/browsed-to content can place even more connections between searching, browsing, and the final content.
Such an approach would be particularly great on a tech support site, which could leverage users who are already accustomed to browsing through Help in desktop applications, and whose browse categories would (hopefully) already be well-honed. The search would have to do a good job of tying into the browse, but it could be pretty effective. Do you see many tech support sites doing this? I haven’t.