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The Other Half of the Search Equation
By xaby | October 14, 2007
A search company’s mandate is clear: help people find exactly what they’re looking for as quickly as possible. For well over a decade, search companies have taken the approach of focusing almost all of their efforts on making their engines smarter, with better indexes, better ranking and faster servers.
While these are all hugely important efforts, making the engine smarter is only half of the equation. The other half of the search equation is making the query smarter — and this was our focus in the design and development of Yahoo! Search Assist.
Recent research conducted by Harris Interactive* indicates that consumers are suffering from “Web Search fatigue.” The study revealed that while the vast majority of the population uses a search engine to find information on the Internet, only 15 percent of people find what they’re looking for with their first search. Typically, people need to conduct three to four searches to find the right result.
While search engines can and will continue to improve, we think making queries smarter is also part of the solution. While there are a handful of seasoned users and professional searchers out there who employ Boolean operators, site restrict and other advanced techniques, no one (ourselves included) wants to have to think hard about which search terms to use. Our vision was to build a system that helps users confidently construct more sophisticated and targeted queries without slowing them down.
Sphere: Related ContentTopics: Search Engine News, Search Engine Optimisation, Up and Coming? |
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