Information Architecture Home Page Week 9 Winter quarter 03/04/02 SOS week 1 intro to PM
Objectives Overview of issues dealing with search Case study of PhotoDisc’s search engine week 1 intro to PM
Search What is our objective as site designers? Should we create a search experience such that users use natural language and find what they are looking for with one attempt? week 1 intro to PM
Commercial Search Engines Use of Meta tags for crawlers and robots which keywords - include competitors keywords to come up on more searches registering and submitting url’s to commercial engines marketing function week 1 intro to PM
Adding search to your site Why add to your site? Users are goal focused; 50% start with search At what level of content requires a site level search engine week 1 intro to PM
Type of content Documents and databases html, PDF’s, word, excel spreadsheets, email messages, images, audio, video week 1 intro to PM
What is a search engine A way to find information keywords versus databases natural language visual week 1 intro to PM
Common Problems No Search results Too many search results Too many irrelevant search results week 1 intro to PM
How do users search week 1 intro to PM
Common errors that users make Spelling errors Difficulties in query formation – mistake AND with OR. Error in search strategy - not a clear understanding of what they are looking for Search terms ambiguous or non-specific week 1 intro to PM
Common errors Hyphenated words such as on line on-line online e-commerce, ecommerce Synonyms doctor versus physician; attorney versus lawyer week 1 intro to PM
Approaches to help overcome Spell checking Stems – check for checking, checker, checked, Wild cards * Synonym expansion Stop words Query by example week 1 intro to PM
Clustering What is the chunk returned – a page, a database record, an email thread What if many hits returned all relate to a common section of a site Collapse or eliminate duplicate listings of the same page week 1 intro to PM
Relevance How many times is the keyword in the document? How early in the document does the word appear? Is the keyword in the title or summary or abstract? How close are two keywords to each other? week 1 intro to PM
Search interface Basic search Scoped search Advanced Search week 1 intro to PM
Search Results How many matches Show url Files size Type of content – pdf, word, html, jpeg, Date last updated Title Abstract or summary First 150 characters week 1 intro to PM
Search Results Number of returns to provide per page Navigating through the results Creating user preferences to determine number of results type of info displayed week 1 intro to PM
Usability Provide the text box instead of the link Make the text wide enough for a typical query provide on every page - hard to predict where a user will get confused saving previous searches no need to provide option to search entire web week 1 intro to PM
Build or Buy Use a service Install build from scratch week 1 intro to PM
Conclusions Need to determine requirements Iterative approach - both for designers and users of site Use query logs for tuning week 1 intro to PM
Conclusions Will better structured sites make it easier for users to find what they want? Will natural language improve results? week 1 intro to PM