9 Search tips, tutorials, techniques & resources
In Search of Better Search
"A website can suffer in findability for many reasons, one of which is the lack of a good site search feature. Either it is hard to use, returns irrelevant results or there is no search feature at all. I’m going to discuss how search can be made better."
Fixing appalling intranet search
"Why do so many of the best organizations in the world have ass-and-cart search engines? The quality of search is astonishingly bad within most organizations. And what’s even more astonishing, nobody’s in charge and nobody really cares."
Search Patterns
"A sandbox for collecting search examples, patterns, and anti-patterns. Over time, I hope to add patterns that illustrate user behavior and the information architecture of search."
Advanced Search: Is The Name A Problem?
"According to Google only 1% of the searches uses “advanced search”. It’s a remarkable low figure if you think about how tough some people think it is to find what they are looking for. But then it struck me, is it advanced to use “Advanced search”? Not particularly."
Back to the User: Creating User-Focused Websites
"This article summarizes five key lessons learned from listening to and observing all kinds of users (from teens to seniors to doctors) try out all kinds of Web sites at various stages of development. Our goal: to provide some overarching guidelines about bringing a customer voice to site design."
Mind your phraseology!
"Controlled vocabulary is aimed at getting people to what they are seeking. No matter what crazy thing they type in the search box. Let's see it in action."
In Defense of Search
"There's no doubt that the implementation of search on many sites actually does stink. But to draw the general conclusion that search is an ineffective tool from these specific observations of existing e-commerce web sites is like eating a frozen egg roll and declaring that all Chinese food is bad."
Three Ways to Improve External Search Engine Usability
"One of the most important details that server logs show is which search engines visitors use to get to the site, and which search terms visitors enter. Checking this information is an extremely useful, fascinating, and almost voyeuristic endeavor that has become a hobby in and of itself."
Better Living Through Taxonomies
"Large websites and intranets can benefit from improved methods of search and navigation. These include site maps, A-Z indexes, sophisticated search engines, and generally improved navigational design—and playing a potential role in all of these methods is well-planned taxonomy."