Website Information Architecture: Website Search system

Source: Internet
Author: User
Tags functions key words modify reference sort

Search system: is also a kind of navigation, simple such as a blog search system, complex such as Google,baidu. Of course, for users to retrieve information should be one of the most practical tools, as long as the input "keyword", and then click the "Search" button can be completed, but how to give users a high degree of matching the search results are more complex, which involves the study of user experience and interaction.

[does the site require a search function?] ]
1. The content of the website is much.
2. When researching the search system, ignore the navigation system and weigh the points. (Of course, some sites are based on the search system).
3. Spend time doing optimization of search results.
4. If you do not do the search system technology, human resources ...
5. Your users may prefer to browse and not search, and sometimes users need a lower priority for search functions.
6. Consider budget and cost.
7. Search lets users and producers know what is currently on the site.
8. Through the search log, analyze the data, collect the data (what the user actually wants, how to express the demand).
9. The location of the fixed search function on the site, compared to the edge of the navigation bar, these users may have search needs.
10. Comb the dynamic update of the website. Maintain the classification and immediacy of the site's results. For example, today in the blog wrote a [Focus on the 2010 World Cup] article, tomorrow when friends come to visit the blog, search "Football", the article [Focus on the 2010 World Cup] will come out.

[ Search System Detailed ]
The focus is on factors that affect the effectiveness of the search system. The factors that affect the search system are: The configuration of search data, search interface, result ordering, repeated query, advanced query, the whole search system and user interaction process.

[ Search is not an IT gadget ]
communicate with all departments involved in the design of the search system and team work.

[ choose what to search for ]
Which content should be indexed for searching?
    • Build a search area, homogeneity of content : In a particular situation, users want to search for the latest football news, don't add miscellaneous basketball news in it.
    • What to search for : Each file and record has a structure that is stored in a content component: the element of content, usually smaller than the file itself. Something in a structure can be used by search engines, such as the author's name, and some can be ignored, such as a legal statement at the bottom of each page.
    • "Good" in the website (recommended) of the content: This concept is similar to the Taobao in the search for "Apple", the mall's information will be listed on the top of the list of information.
[ determine search area ]
When a user searches a search area, he gets a better search effect by showing that he or she is interested in only specific information, ideally the search area in the site corresponds to the specific needs of the user.

The nature of the site itself and the classification of the content to do the region's search conditions, such as the Dell site by choice of user type, search related Computer products theme (find drive, find maintenance points, etc.). This search page is a new, purposeful way to organize the page, providing users with different search interface, in the end, we usually see the site [Advanced Search].

How to classify a search area:Content category, user, subject, geographical location, chronology method, author, department (these classification methods are dead, different sites or according to different needs to classify, such as Taobao search will also be divided into promotional baby, love Baby, global purchase, delivery to pay. (Figure 1)
Figure 1

[ Index to what content ]
is to select which content is searched and displayed in the results of the search.
1. The subject of the article (preferably a portion of the text associated with the keyword).
2. Title.
3.URL.
4. Website name. (In a specific context, as in Google search)
5. Links. (It may also be a text link)
6. Image link.
7. Alternative text for images.
8. Description.
9. Key words.
10. Remote anchor text.
Some of them are also in line with web search engine optimization.

[ search Algorithm ]
Pattern matching algorithm: Recall and precision
Recall = search for related files (all files in the collection)
Precision = retrieved related files (related files in a collection)
Look at this section of the content or look at Google Blackboard [Science and Technology],[Chinese Webmaster Blog] to the practical, profound.

[Query Accessibility tools ]
Tools to increase the effectiveness of the query, which are often not visible to the user (plainly, the ability to provide search help skills, for example, you search in the Taobao, because the word hit the quick input "Connaught", the search results will first show "Connaught" results of 0, but will provide a correction and prompts you to find is not "Nokia "and list" Nokia "related content, unfortunately not yet, are just some irrelevant hints) (Figure 2)
Figure 2

Spell Checking Tool: When the user misspelled terminology, the automatic sample is searching the term, the correct result is searched out.
Voice Tools:By pronouncing, searching for words, words and words with the same pronunciation.
Stem Search Tool:
Search for terms that contain the same meaning. (meaning association)
Natural language processing tools:
Check the nature of the grammar, whether you want to "download" the file, or "Browse" the file, narrow the search results.
Love to control thesaurus and thesaurus:
9th detail: What eye-_-!
The above work is suitable and use.

[ Show Results ]
Display which content components, and how to categorize, how to column.
What content components are displayed
    • For those who already know what they're looking for, displays representative content components that help users differentiate between search results, such as users searching for "Web information Architecture", and search results should be relatively parochial; users who are unsure of what they are looking for can create an association of search results from descriptive content components. , such as user search "gift", search results should be a broad range.
    • When the search results show the same content, the application of more display a bit of relevant information to make a distinction, such as users search "Web information Architecture", the search results will be added to the different prices of the book in different stores. (Figure 3) Figure 3
    • Organize what is available in each file and how to use the content, to help direct the search results, such as users search "Hangzhou grandmother Home", the result will be a telephone number and address. (Figure 4) Figure 4
    • The display of content is not much, then enhance the search term search results in the visual center of gravity, such as user search keywords are always in the search results page to become thicker, red, in short, become eye-catching.
How many files do you want to display?
Control the content of each search results, give the total number of search results, a large number of the design of navigation, sorting and other interactive functions

[List results ]
Ranking (sorting) rankings (ranking)
Alphabetical order:Book Class
sorted by year:Even the news class (from new to old). There is also a history (from old to new)
rank by relevance:
    • How many words in the query string are included in the searched file?
    • The frequency with which the term appears in a file.
    • Where the term appears. For example, adjacent? Same sentence? Same paragraph?
    • Where the term appears, the current title is more relevant than the current text.
    • The query term appears in the popular degree (pr value) of the file in which it resides.
How does different relevance rankings make more sense for different search targets? File a May rank higher than file B, but B is highly correlated, why? Because B is a reference file with real dependencies, and file A is just a long file, it happens to have many terms in the query string. So the higher the heterogeneity of similar documents, is more careful to use the relevant rankings? Also referred to [manual processing results],[to the results] these correlation ranking methods.
rank According to popularity:PR value of the site, the more links to page A, the more it shows that page A is more valuable. For example, there are two articles A and article B with the same name on the Internet, 100 pages point to article A, 10 pages point to article B, that article A will show more than article B.
Of course, to provide links to the page itself the PR value is also very important, such as 100 pages point to article A, there are 100 pages point to article B, then the article at and article B before and after the display order to consider the page itself PR value. Yes, this is not a good idea for a small website!
ranking of users or experts:The ranking is determined by the user's evaluation or expert's analysis. For example, the word of mouth to find "Sichuan cuisine", this through the user evaluation program search results are very reference, of course, these evaluations may also have a.
Pay by order rank :Before b do this thing, G also dry, but g dry more honest.
Group results topic type groups to group results, provide context for the results, select the most interesting directory, you can narrow the browsing scope. (Figure 5) Figure 5
[Export Results] Print: a concept of saving, which seems to go beyond the scope of the discussion search system, and feel the topic in a [snapshot] form better.
Send: This feeling is to discuss the concept of shopping cart, collection class.
Storage results: In some cases, the user wants to keep the search itself, rather than the result. This is similar to the concept of Google Alerts,rss. Some users may not use these features, they only save URL links to search results: If a user collects a link, the user will be updated with the link content the next time it is accessed through the Favorites folder.

[Design Search Interface]
External uncertainties affecting the search interface:
Use the popular query language.
The less keywords the user offers when searching, the more convenient they are, but the search results don't want a discount.
Some of the features of advanced search can be embedded inside the search engine. For example, Google makes a lot of assumptions about what kind of results the user wants (through the correlation algorithm) and how they want the results to be displayed (using the popularity algorithm).

[Search box]
    • The user sees the search interface, will associate his function and use way, as far as possible lets the website search way follow the popular search method to go. For example, general site search support to enter two keywords at the same time such search criteria (two keywords plus space between) (such as Figure 6), users also want to search other sites, you can also search in this way.
      Figure 6
    • When users first use your site's search, when they see the search results interface, it is a good time to prompt and help users to continue to correct error and further operation. For example, in Wjs search for the content of Figure 6, you will find (Figure 7)
      Figure 7
    • Do not put the search box and other input boxes together, to maintain the independence and unity.
    • Save space, you can use a drop-down column as a search condition when you need to categorize the search type (Figure 8)
Figure 8

Try to find out what users think about searching before searching, allowing you to set default values when designing a simple search interface.

[Advanced Search] Advanced search has always been better than nothing. Put a search engine's various difficult search features on the Advanced search page, so that a small number of users can still use when needed. However, the goal of designing a search interface is to make it unnecessary for most searchers to access the Advanced search page (to create an interface that looks more complex).

[support for modifying features] ]
To repeat the search in the results page:
When the search results page comes out, the original search string is displayed in the search box, allowing the user to modify it, rather than re-enter it.
Show where the results come from:Let people figure out what the search is, what sort of things come from, and then decide to expand or narrow the search? (Figure 9) Figure 9
describe what the user did:Let the user know the situation. The search results reflect what you just set up when you searched, and provide the functionality you can modify. For example (Figure 10)
Figure 10
The special content that you set when using advanced search (Figure 11), the user can correspond and modify the content that has just been selected, and provide more choice to narrow the result, and get accurate result. Figure 11 Integrated Search and browsing:directories and files are retrieved when they are searched, which causes the search box to be set to the area. The user chooses a book, the corresponding search category goes into "book" Class. (Figure 12) Figure 12

[When the user is tripped] what happens when the result is too much or the result is 0 o'clock?
too many results:It allows users to refine requirements and sort content through more in-depth requirements, thus filtering and displaying as required. such as (Figure 13) Red block section Figure 13 The result is zero:"No end" strategy to solve this problem, in addition to the 2nd part of the first half of the more reliable, other feel more "nonsense"
    • Modify the search.
    • Provide search tips (Figure 7) or other suggestions for improved search.
    • Browse tools (including the site's navigation system and Sitemap).
    • Search and browse cannot act, provide contact method. Finish


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