Peter is right on here... in theory. But in application it typically does not work. The users with the greatest needs, within government sites in particular, do not have domain expertise. So they often do not know what to search for. Google has by far, the most productive and useful search algorithms on the planet. They are currently setting the expectations way high (which is a rear and really good thing). But if you spend any time on corporate or government sites you will find they pale in comparison. The indexing is bad... there is little allocation for cross referencing terminology and misspellings.
Navigation, classifications and the browsing process can be an incredibly powerful tool in bringing context to a users quest, especially when they do not really know what to look for. Recent searches, most popular searches and help within the search are helping to bridge the gap between these to ways of finding stuff... but they are rare applications in intrasite search. Mark On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 1:46 AM, David Lambert <dlamb...@appdev.info> wrote: > Personally, I find value in the structure a well-designed product site > affords. "Search" presumes that I know what I'm looking for, while > "Browse" allows me to see and react to topics that interest me. > > Very frequently, for instance, when I land on a product company's > page, I'll browse to see what other products that company offers -- > at this point, I've decided that I'm interested enough to see what > else the company has to offer. > > I'm a big proponent of search as a supplement to browsing, but I'm > not sure I'd go all the way to "search-dominant". > > > . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . > Posted from the new ixda.org > http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=45983 > > > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
