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.'

The Difference Between Usability and User Experience
Source: CMS Wire, 22 March 2010
 
Never hurts to be reminded: semantics, or genuine conceptual distinction?

Use Your Users’ Language - And Use It Well!
Source: Multilingual Search, 20 March 2010
 
British English is very different from (US ) American English and Australian English. It is so very important to use your users’ language.

Cyber-criminals don't need Technical Skills
Source: SFGate, 19 March 2010
 
The unexpected downside of great usability.

Advice on Designing Mobile Sites and Apps
Source: Poynter Online, 18 March 2010
 
Series of useful tips from a recent panel discussion.

Website Usability and Conversion
Source: UsabilityBlog, 17 March 2010
 
Useful presentation on the relationship between website usability and conversion.

Tips for Usability Testing with Children
Source: Econsultancy, 16 March 2010
 
Not even chocolate will help you here.

The Hygiene Factor of Usability
Source: inspireUX, 15 March 2010
 
Is it true that usability can no longer take us 'beyond lack of dissatisfaction'?

The Business Benefits of building Accessible websites
Source: Econsultancy, 13 March 2010
 
There’s a good business case for making your website more accessible to the UK’s disabled community.

Internet access is 'a fundamental right'
Source: BBC, 12 March 2010
 
Almost four in five people around the world believe that access to the internet is a fundamental right, a poll for the BBC World Service suggests.

The Net generation, Unplugged
Source: The Economist, 11 March 2010
 
Is it really helpful to talk about a new generation of "digital natives" who have grown up with the internet?