The fundamentals of quality search, part 1: January 15, 2001 issue of New Thinking

January 15, 2001 New Thinking:
Quality search fundamentals: part 1

Website content management

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January 15, 2001

The fundamentals of quality search:
part 1

By Gerry McGovern

The Internet is about publishing and every website is a publication. A reader approaches a publication with two fundamental needs. The first is to find out some specific piece of information. The second is to be given an opinion – to be informed as to what is important content today, this week, this month.

When a reader has a specific piece of content in mind that they want from a publication, the activity by which they go about finding that information is by either navigating a classification (clicking through a set of links), or through use of a search process. What I’d like to explore at here is how a website can improve the way it allows its reader to search.

Let me start by saying that in my experience most websites do a really bad job with their search. Even though it is one of the most frequent activities we all do on the web, a great many websites deal with their search engines in a haphazard way. I’m not alone in feeling frustrated. A recent survey by WebTop found that 71% of people who use the Internet said they were frustrated by Web searches and 46% found them nerve-wracking.

A quality search process begins with quality metadata. Basically, it’s that old principle: “Garbage in – garbage out”. No matter how good your search engine is, if you don’t structure and organize your content well, the results to the reader will be poor, particularly if you have a lot of content on your website. Metadata is about giving your content structure.

The better you structure and classify your content as you create it the easier it is to design a very powerful and effective search. If every document is assigned keywords, for example, then the reader will get a much more accurate return from their search. If you classify all content by geography, for example, then the reader can search for content that relates to a specific country or region.

Here are some guidelines for designing a basic search process for your website:

Since search is such a common activity, the search box should appear on every page of your website. Don’t hide it behind a link
The search box, where the reader enters in their search query, should be sufficiently large to allow a minimum of twenty characters to be entered
The ideal font for the search box is Arial, as Arial is a narrow font and allows the reader to enter in more characters
The font size in the box should ideally be 10 point and no smaller than 8 point
There should be a button to the right of the search box labelled “Search”
Search should begin with the touch of the return key, as well as the click of the “Search” button
If you offer an Advanced Search option, then a text link should appear underneath the search box labelled “Advanced search”
The initial target of the basic search should be the contents of the entire website
The basic search should allow for Boolean commands (AND, OR), although this does not need to be explained

Gerry McGovern

Next issue: Fundamentals of quality search, part 2
Previous issue: Predictions for 2001
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Even though it is one of the most frequent activities we all do on the web, a great many websites deal with their search engines in a haphazard way.