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.'

All change at the top for System Concepts
Source: System Concepts Ltd, 3 July 2009
 
Leslie Fountain has been promoted to joint Managing Director of leading usability consultancy System Concepts.

Life in UCD immortalised in fiction: you couldn't make it up
Source: UN, 2 July 2009
 
Sarah Herman's fictitious book on life in a user-centred design company has hit the shelves and The Guardian's book pages...

Interfaces Magazine - Issue 79: The Education Issue
Source: Interaction Group, 1 July 2009
 
The latest issue of Interfaces is now available as a free download from the Interaction Website.

Two new Behavioural research Tools from Noldus
Source: UN, 30 June 2009
 
Tool updates make on-site behavioural data collection easier.

Cell Phones that Listen and Learn
Source: MIT Technology Review, 29 June 2009
 
New software tracks a user's behavior by monitoring everyday sounds.

Top Six Don’ts for Usability Testing
Source: FutureNow Inc., 27 June 2009
 
Six tips for creating quality usability tests to ensure useful feedback from testers.

Usability: ‘Lovely software. But I can’t work it’
Source: FT.com, 26 June 2009
 
In a recent survey by Global Graphics, 77 per cent of office workers estimate they lose up to one hour a week because business software is difficult to use.

And what do you do?
Source: Dexo Design, 25 June 2009
 
How do you describe your job role? Here are the results of a recent 'Preferred UX/UI Title' Poll.

Most Doctors cite Usability as critical to Electronic Health Record Adoption
Source: TMCNet, 24 June 2009
 
It's all about 'meaningful use'.

Glossy monitors look good but can hurt
Source: QUT, 23 June 2009
 
A new advisory cites research which suggests high gloss monitors make users sit awkwardly.