How to improve your site search ...or "looking for jamie oliver"
by Tim Fidgeon
Making sure that your search engine makes it as easy as possible for your
customers to find what they are looking for is business-critical. It is also very difficult - good search engines can cost an awful lot of money and require a lot of ongoing effort to keep them up to
scratch.
As an example: on Monday 12th December 2005, I wanted to buy a copy of Jamie Oliver’s new cook book Jamie’s Italy from amazon.co.uk. So, I went to the "Books" section of their website and searched for "olivers italy" and these 9 items appeared on the
results page:
- "The American Tractor" by Patrick W. Ertel
- "A Garden in Lucca: Finding Paradise in Tuscany" by Paul Gervais
- "History in Exile: Memory and Identity at the Borders of the Balkans" by Pamela Ballinger
- "Oliver Tractors" by Jeff Hackett, Mike Schaefer
- "Wyoming Moon Handbooks S." by Don Pitcher
- "Wines of Australia Mitchell Beazley Wine Guides" by James Halliday
- "All Music Guide to Jazz: The Definitive Guide to Jazz Music" by Ron Wynn Editor, et al.
- "Larousse Gastronomique: The World’s Greatest Cookery Encyclopedia" by Prosper Montagne
- "The Teacher’s Calendar: The Day-By-Day Directory to Holidays, Historical Events, Birthdays and Special Days, Weeks and Months" by Holly McGuire Compiler, et al.
Jamie Oliver’s book didn’t appear anywhere on the results page, even though it had been Amazon’s 3rd best-selling book in the previous 24 hours.
The problem was that I had typed "olivers italy", instead of "oliver’s italy" which would have returned Jamie Oliver’s at the top of the search results list. That single missing apostrophe was all that it took for Amazon’s expensive search engine to splutter, fall over and fail.
So - if Amazon can’t do it, it must be impossible, right?
Wrong - here are some things the boys & girls at Amazon could - and should - have thought about.
Two types of problems
There are two basic types of problems that a user can experience when they are searching for something:
- User error - the correct search term is entered incorrectly i.e. the user intends to enter a search term that would cause the search engine to return results that are relevant to their needs, but they enter it incorrectly
- Search engine error - the wrong search term is entered i.e. the user enters a search term that the search engine does not relate to their needs
- User error
People generally enter the correct search term incorrectly because they either:- Don’t know how to spell it
- Have made a typing error
It’s important to realise that there are millions of potential customers who can’t spell very well. For example, a survey of the literacy i.e. reading and writing estimated that there were 25 of Welsh adults aged 16 to 65-year-olds had literacy levels no higher than those expected of an 11 year-old source: The National Literacy Trust.
Also, let’s not forget that according to the British Dyslexia Association around 4 of the population are severely dyslexic and a further 6 have mild to moderate dyslexia problems.
This means that your search engine has to account for people making basic knowledge-based spelling mistakes.
Your search engine should also account for people who know how to spell what they are looking for, but make typing errors. The main categories of typing error are:
- Characters close to one another on the keyboard being entered erroneously either in place of - or in addition to - the correct letter. For example: wrong/wring ; for/dfor
- Characters being omitted. For example: missing/missng ; oliver’s/olivers
- Characters being entered too many times. For example: impossible/imposssible
- Characters being entered in the wrong order. For example: display/disaply ; being/bing
Your search engine should allow people to make these mistakes and still return useful and relevant results.
Even though we have named these types of issues ’User error’, if your search engine fails to return information that that the user is looking for it is, of course, your fault and not theirs!
What to do
The next steps for making your search engine perform better are really simple:
- Sit down and make a list of all the spelling errors, typing errors and alternative search terms that you think could possibly be relevant to your site e.g. actually look at your keyboard and think about what letters are close to one another
- Ask other people in your organisation to make similar lists
- Do some research into what search terms people are using on your site e.g. interviews, questionnaires, check your search engine logs, etc.
- Apply everything you learn to your search engine.
And that’s it. You now have the knowledge you need to begin improving your site’s search engine.
Other thoughts
Improvements in word processing software have made people lazy typists. Software that auto-corrects many spelling and typing errors means that people are no longer forced to review and correct their work to the same extent as in the past. This means that many people are getting out of the habit of precise spelling/typing. So, when they move out of an auto-correcting environment and onto a website, for example they are more likely to make - and less likely to notice/correct - mistakes!
Also, search results pages should display the search term the user entered in large text e.g. 28pt. This would help people spot any inadvertent errors.Results pages should also provide the telephone numbers for customer enquiries/assistance.
About the author
This article was written by Tim Fidgeon. Tim’s crazy about web usability - so crazy that he now works for Webcredible, an industry leading web usability and accessibility consultancy. When he’s not running Webcredible’s web usability training course he can usually be found
conducting usability testing.
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