1. www.sharon-it.com1 Search Engine Usability Taly Sharon www.sharon-it.com taly@sharon-it.com sharont@alum.mit.edu

2. www.sharon-it.com2 Agenda Search Engines Issues Search Engines UI Paradigms –Including Ajax, query formulation and results Demonstration links (see www.sharon-it.com/new.html)www.sharon-it.com/new.html References

3. www.sharon-it.com3 Search Engines Issues How to phrase query? How to interpret query? How to present results? Additional Problem: Web Users (see next)!

4. www.sharon-it.com4 Web Users?  Make poor queries –short (3.3 terms average) –imprecise terms –sub-optimal syntax (80% without operators) –low effort  Wide variance on –Needs –Expectations –Knowledge –Bandwidth (and platforms)  Specific behavior –85% look over one result screen only –78% of queries not modified

5. www.sharon-it.com5 Search Engines UI Paradigms Simple  Overloaded Keywords  Natural (NLP) User Control  Automatic Static  Dynamic (Ajax) Textual  Graphical

6. www.sharon-it.com6 Simple  Overloaded Google: Lean and Mean?

7. www.sharon-it.com7 Yahoo!

8. www.sharon-it.com8 search.Yahoo.com

9. www.sharon-it.com9 Google in 1998 – looking up at Yahoo!? Source: Internet archive’s Wayback machine www.archive.orgwww.archive.org

10. www.sharon-it.com10 Google Personalized

11. www.sharon-it.com11 Advanced

12. www.sharon-it.com12 MSN Search Builder

13. www.sharon-it.com13 Search Engines UI Paradigms Simple  Overloaded Keywords  Natural (NLP) User Control  Automatic Static  Dynamic (Ajax) Textual  Graphical

14. www.sharon-it.com14 Keywords  Natural (NLP) Problem: How to formulate query? Solution 1: use Refine, Google Suggest Solution 2: use questions and answers engines - natural language processing (NLP)

15. www.sharon-it.com15 Excite

16. www.sharon-it.com16 Google Suggest As you type – you get query suggestions and number of results per query. labs.google.com/suggest

17. www.sharon-it.com17 Q&A Engines (Natural Language) General SEs Q&A: –Google –Yahoo –MSN Q&A Engines: –Ask –Brainboost –Lexxe

18. www.sharon-it.com18 (Dis)Advantages Advantages: –quick and dirty answer. Disadvantages: –often fail –Inaccurate Who murdered JFK “Why the Fed Murdered JFK” (brainboost) Who is the prime minister of Israel? Ariel Sharon (May 2006) –non-verified sources –slow

19. www.sharon-it.com19 Search Engines UI Paradigms Simple  Overloaded Keywords  Natural (NLP) User Control  Automatic Static  Dynamic (Ajax) Textual  Graphical

20. www.sharon-it.com20 Meta Search Engine (MSE) MetaCrawler YahooWeb CrawlerOpen TextLycosInfoSeekInktomiGalaxyExcite Google · Yahoo · Ask About · LookSmart · Overture FindWhat

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22. www.sharon-it.com22 Vivisimo: link: Not supported?

23. www.sharon-it.com23 Problems of MSEs Limited support of advanced search options. Limited number (~10) of results from each search engine. Sponsored results from the SEs are not highlighted. ?Does the average user know this?

24. www.sharon-it.com24 Query Results Examples of User Interface in Query Results’ pages : –Google –Clusty/Vivisimo –A9 –Exalead –KartOO (see Graphical)

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26. www.sharon-it.com26 Clusty

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30. www.sharon-it.com30 Search Engines UI Paradigms Simple  Overloaded Keywords  Natural (NLP) User Control  Automatic Static  Dynamic (Ajax) Textual  Graphical

31. www.sharon-it.com31 Ajax Asynchronous JavaScript and XML

32. www.sharon-it.com32 Ajax Asynchronous JavaScript and XML A Web 2.0 technology Fast (real-time) interactive page updates - directly from the database Ajax applications Try it yourself - Google Web Toolkit (GWT)

33. www.sharon-it.com33 Example Ajax Applications Google Maps/Local (Yahoo, A9) Housing Maps Google Suggest Windows live Yahoo! Instant Search GMail And many more..

34. www.sharon-it.com34 HousingMaps Mash-up of Google maps and Craigs list rentals Mash-up are websites that are built from pieces of other websites http://www.housingmaps.com/

35. www.sharon-it.com35 Ajax Pros/Cons Pros –Interactivity! Cons –might easily break the expected behavior of the browser's back button –difficult for a user to bookmark a particular state of the application –users might experience delay in the interface of the web application –requires users to have JavaScript (or ActiveX) enabled in their browsers –a challenge for developers interested in adhering to WAI accessibility guidelines.

36. www.sharon-it.com36 Yahoo! Instant Example of slow reaction Good implementation of “back” instant.search.yahoo.com

37. www.sharon-it.com37 AlltheWeb LiveSearch Yahoo’s AlltheWeb now has a new Livesearch feature. Livesearch It takes the Google Suggest approach a step further.Google Suggest You will instantly see the results to the right side. http://livesearch.alltheweb.com/?ek=1

38. www.sharon-it.com38 Search Engines UI Paradigms Simple  Overloaded Keywords  Natural (NLP) User Control  Automatic Static  Dynamic (Ajax) Textual  Graphical

39. www.sharon-it.com39 Visual/Graphical Search Engines KartOO www.kartOO.comwww.kartOO.com TouchGraph

40. www.sharon-it.com40 Examples 1.Query: “Taly Sharon” –Main webpage, www.sharon-it.comwww.sharon-it.com –co-authors (selker, lieberman, frank, lockerd, etc.) –Conferences (IFLA, CHI, SigGraph, etc.) –Related keywords (mostly from research/papers) –Other related: GoogleGuide.com 2.Query: www.sharon-it.com (website)www.sharon-it.com

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43. www.sharon-it.com43 (Dis)Advantages Advantages: –very visual, easy to detect trends. –Useful to find connections Disadvantages: –Requires training –Easy disorientation

44. www.sharon-it.com44 Demonstration Links Google www.google.comwww.google.com Yahoo www.yahoo.comwww.yahoo.com Yahoo Search Interface search.yahoo.comsearch.yahoo.com Google 1998 (from Internet Archive) http://web.archive.org/web/19981111183552/http://google.stanford.edu/ http://web.archive.org/web/19981111183552/http://google.stanford.edu/ Yahoo Advanced search.yahoo.com/web/advanced?ei=UTF-8search.yahoo.com/web/advanced?ei=UTF-8 Google Personalized www.google.com/igwww.google.com/ig MSN Search Builder search.msn.co.ilsearch.msn.co.il Excite www.excite.comwww.excite.com Google Suggest labs.google.com/suggestlabs.google.com/suggest Ask www.ask.comwww.ask.com Brainboost www.brainboost.comwww.brainboost.com Lexxe www.lexxe.comwww.lexxe.com Dogpile www.dogpile.comwww.dogpile.com Vivisimo www.vivisimo.comwww.vivisimo.com Clusty www.clusty.comwww.clusty.com A9 www.a9.comwww.a9.com Exalead www.exalead.comwww.exalead.com Google Maps maps.google.commaps.google.com Housing Maps www.housingmaps.comwww.housingmaps.com A9 maps maps.a9.commaps.a9.com Windows live www.live.comwww.live.com Yahoo Instant instant.search.yahoo.cominstant.search.yahoo.com Alltheweb Livesearch livesearch.alltheweb.com/?ek=1livesearch.alltheweb.com/?ek=1 Kartoo www.kartoo.comwww.kartoo.com

45. www.sharon-it.com45 References Ajax – wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AJAX http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AJAX http://blogs.zdnet.com/micro- markets/index.php?p=27http://blogs.zdnet.com/micro- markets/index.php?p=27 http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/downloads/2 006AnalystDay.pdfhttp://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/downloads/2 006AnalystDay.pdf http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4900742. stmhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4900742. stm http://www.dsi.uniroma1.it/~ale//BICI/IR/Slides /bertinoro8.pdfhttp://www.dsi.uniroma1.it/~ale//BICI/IR/Slides /bertinoro8.pdf