Seasonal Search Round-up shows Human Interest dominating

Search engines are drawing further on user experience to win the battle for hits.

What makes a good search engine? in Computer User looks at Teoma, the biggest rival to Google in esteem if not popularity. James Mathewson interviews Teoma's head of Research and Development, Apostolos Gerasoulis, and Steve Berkowitz, president of the search engine's owner, Ask Jeeves Web properties.

Gerasoulis reveals that relevance is multidimensional, consisting of textual relevance, authority, and community.

'You start with a string of words and try to match sites that contain those words to the user's query. We call this textual relevance. But the Web is chaotic; there's no uniform way of matching words or phrases exactly to what people want. Still, you try to come up with the most comprehensive list of sites that contain that string of words. The next step is to list the pages in order of authority. We define authority as the most respected pages on the Web. ... Once we have the results ranked by subject-specific popularity, we sort them into community clusters. This is the really interesting thing about Teoma 2.0. Every community uses words differently; they have different rules for the way the language is used. And community members even search for things differently using the same words. Let's say you type in "Apple" you might get results for Apple Computer, apple butter, apple picking, etc. These results will be grouped by their community meanings for the word 'apple'. The user can narrow their search by the community they belong to.

For those familiar with discourse analysis, it will be apparent that Teoma is using 'repertoires' to sort relevance - a welcome initiative.

Meanwhile owner, Ask Jeeves, has just signed up competitor Google to provide its sponsored search facility, as it already does in the USA.

A Question of Answers in The Age tells the stories of various people employed as researchers for Google. The article doesn't deal specifically with usability but gives an insight into the service structure of the paid-for question answering service that Google introduced to supplement searches on the site.

Yahoo! has just launched Yahoo! Search this week after eight months of researching how its existing services are used, with new features including: a leaner, easier-to-use page design; shortcuts to information; a new search start page; customised search preferences; and an enhanced Yahoo! companion, a search toolbar that enables users to use Yahoo Search from any browser.

At the other end, of preparing sites for the approach of search engines, Scott Buresh writes in Search Engine Guide about Styling Your Copy for Search Engines AND Visitors. The most important thing, he says, in optimising pages for search engines is not to compromise the visitor experience.

'Since all of the major search engines use the words that appear on web pages as an important factor in their ranking algorithms, it is important to make sure that you let the search engines know exactly what your pages are about. However, it is just as important that you do so in a way that will not compromise your marketing message or turn off your visitors.'

Six Metrics for Managing UI Design
Source: Russell Wilson, 28 August 2008
 
A proposal of six metrics to be used for managing a user interface design department.

Don't Judge a Form by its Cover
Source: Formulate Information Design, 27 August 2008
 
The saying "don't judge a book by its cover" reminds us that looks are deceptive. It turns out that this idiom applies to forms too.

Beijing Olympics - special State of the eNation report
Source: www.abilitynet.org.uk, 26 August 2008
 
In this special report AbilityNet asked disabled users to try out the Beijing Olympics website in our interaction lab.

It's Who You Know (Or Don't)
Source: Stanford Magazine, 23 August 2008
 
Online social networks are powerful and ineffectual all at once.

Winning Considerations for Interactive Content
Source: UXMatters, 22 August 2008
 
Rich options for interactively presenting content also come with a challenge.

Microsoft sees end of Windows era
Source: BBC, 20 August 2008
 
Microsoft has kicked off a research project to create software that will take over when it retires Windows.

News you can Use
Source: Gerry McGovern, 18 August 2008
 
When the homepage is dominated by news you are not necessarily communicating more.

Feeling Through your Computer
Source: Discoveries and Breakthroughs Inside Science, 16 August 2008
 
A newly designed device lets computer users feel the texture and movement of what they are seeing in front of them.

User interviews - A basic Introduction
Source: Webcredible, 15 August 2008
 
It's surprising how few people have a real understanding of who's using their site.

Helping Visitors find Information
Source: UN, 13 August 2008
 
A new report outlines the key findings from surveys that explored factors which influence the quality of online experience.