Karl Fast, Fred Leise and Mike Steckel has written an article on synonym rings, with specific examples relating to their use in search engines. To quote: Synonym rings and authority files are simple tools that can bridge the gap between natural language and complex controlled vocabularies (taxonomies and thesauri) quite ...
Blog category: Search tools
June 26, 2003 by James Robertson
Searching the workplace web
Ronald Fagin et al have written an interesting article on designing intranet search. To quote: The social impact from the World Wide Web cannot be underestimated, but technologies used to build the Web are also revolutionizing the sharing of business and government information within intranets. In many ways the lessons ...
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June 19, 2003 by James Robertson
On Search: The Users
Tim Bray continues his series of articles on search engines, this time focusing on the users. The biggest thing to jump out at me: Nobody Uses Advanced Search... Every search engine has an 'advanced search' screen, and nobody (quantitatively, less than 0.5% of users) ever goes there. This drove us ...
June 19, 2003 by James Robertson
Search engines: best bets
Tanya Rabourn has posted a blog entry on search engine best bets. In it, she points a useful article by Richard Wiggins, and an excellent graph of the search term distribution on her site. Research at its best...
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June 18, 2003 by James Robertson
Tim Bray on search engines
Tim Bray has written the first of a planned series of articles on search engines. To quote: This is the first of a series on search, by which I mean full-text search. Anyone who uses computers now uses search pretty well every day, so this is an important chunk of ...
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May 26, 2003 by James Robertson
How search can help you understand your audience
Martin Belam has written another article based on his experiences on the BBCi project, this time on how search can help you understand your audience. To quote: One thing that becomes abundantly clear from even a cursory examination of the search logs at BBCi is that the BBC has an ...
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April 19, 2003 by James Robertson
More on statistical laws
Following up on the last post, Eric Scheid identified a few more relevant resources: StatisticalLawsA page on the marvellous IAWiki listing a number of statistical laws relevant to information architecture. ROI/Value of Search Engine DesignJared M. Spool: "As someone recently mentioned, most content requests fall into a standard Zipf ...
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April 14, 2003 by James Robertson
Future visions for search UIs
A list of workshop submissions for CHI 2003 on building search interfaces has been posted. There's some really interesting topics here, including: Search Log Analysis as a Usability Engineering Tool Using Categories to Improve Search Utilizing a users context to improve search results Search Without Keywords Search Query Spellchecking (The full papers have been provided ...
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April 7, 2003 by James Robertson
Analysing searches on BBCi
Martin Belam has written a truly excellent article on his research into search behaviours on BBCi. This works through a wealth of information collected, and highlights some very interesting results. A must read for anyone looking to analyse search engine results... [Thanks to High Context.]
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January 16, 2003 by James Robertson
Do boolean searches make sense?
Donna Maurer has written two interesting blog entries on whether "normal" users understand how boolean terms (AND, OR, etc) work when searching. The first blog entry discussed ANDing, while the second rounds out the topic neatly with a user's comments on ORing.
January 13, 2003 by James Robertson
Faceted metadata search and browse
SearchTools has released a practical article on using faceted metadata to enhance search. It contains some interesting screenshots, and a gentle introduction to the concepts. To quote: A good solution to these problems involves exposing the facets in dynamic taxonomies, so that the search user can see exactly the options ...
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November 20, 2002 by James Robertson
Search results: no more than first two pages
NUA has reported on recent study results which looked at how internet search engines are being used. Some very interesting (but not hugely surprising) results: According to a recent study from iProspect, three-quarters of Internet users use search engines. However, 16 percent of Internet users only look at the first ...
October 16, 2002 by James Robertson
Flamenco Search Interface Project
I have stumbled across the Flamenco Search Interface Project, which is an effort to research the design of faceted navigation systems. They provide several prototype interfaces, and have a strong usability focus.
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October 11, 2002 by James Robertson
Death of keywords
Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Watch reports on the death of meta tags. To quote: Now supported by only one major crawler-based search engine -- Inktomi -- the value of adding meta keywords tags to pages seems little worth the time. In my opinion, the meta keywords tag is dead, ...
October 1, 2002 by James Robertson
Why searches fail
I've come across a good article on why searches fail, which lists the following top five reasons: Empty Searches Wrong Scope Vocabulary Mismatch Spelling Mistakes Query Requirements Not Met Like in my article, the critical importance of creating and tracking search engine logs is highlighted.
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September 12, 2002 by James Robertson
Applying the 80/20 rule to IA
Lou Rosenfeld writes about the 80/20 rule in IA. He highlights that a few key elements have a major impact upon the success of users, and recommends focusing efforts on areas such as: Main page Search interface Search results Browsing interface The "found document" I definitely agree with the 80/20 rule when solving information architecture ...
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August 29, 2002 by James Robertson
Fixing the Microsoft intranet?
Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville have written an article on fixing the Microsoft intranet. This is a huge system, with other 3 million (!) pages, and 8000 separate (and inconsistent) intranets. In other words, a mess. The approach taken was to develop a "portal" with a consistent taxonomy, and an ...
