Alexa vs Search traffic
Lots of people criticize the reliability of the Alexa toolbar - see the comments on Matt Cutts' blog or more recently from Om Malik. I would like to offer some qualified support for the Alexa toolbar - with some data to back it up. At SLI we run the site search for lots of sites [...]
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Was this link useful?
Peter Da Vanzo spotted Google asking users if they found a link useful: Note: It was only shown after he clicked on the result and then returned to the search results page. This is similar to our free feedback tool that asks if the search results page was useful. The main difference is they're asking [...]
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The customer is in control
I came across this interesting research by Lauren Freedman of the e-tailing Group: The Customer is in Control (note: you do need to sign up to access this but it is free). This poll of 1300 consumers contains lots of useful information for retailers. The most relevant for us is that 83% of those polled […]
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Searching for search on Technorati
Stephan Spencer sent this through to me. You've got to laugh - a search for "Internal Search" on Technorati returns a Search Error :). It is working now - but it is amazing how useless the results are.
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eTail Mid-Market
We're exhibiting at eTail Mid-Market on Tuesday, Wednesday this week in San Francisco. We would love to see you if you can make it.
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Meet our Learning Navigation Service
This week we launched our Learning Navigation service. This is a natural extension to our Learning Search service. Learning Navigation makes it easier for your visitors to find what they're looking for while they're navigating your site because it brings the popular products to the top at all stages of the navigation. We've designed the [...]
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Ajax Search
There is growing interest in using Ajax with search. Google is experimenting with it at Searchmash.com. Microsoft are using it on Windows Live Search and Amazon are using Ajax on A9. Eurekster are using Ajax to allow users to change the search results on Swikis and Snap are using it to display search suggestions. Ajax [...]
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Chiasso and PC Universe in the news
I noticed a couple of our customers in the news this week. PC Universe won a web award. We power their search and one of our partners, Left Click Labs, has recently helped them redesign their site. Well done to Tom, Patrick and the team at PC Universe. I also saw Chiasso featured in this [...]
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Grid vs List view for search results
We continuously try to improve our best practices around site search. Recently we've been looking at layout options. Specifically, which is the best layout grid or list. The grid view is more compact and so allows you to show more products above the fold. It is potentially easier to browse through many results using this [...]
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More on site search vs web search
Following on from my earlier post speculating that there are way more site searches than web searches. Why is it that we hear so much less about site search? Both site search and web search are important for a site owner - web search helps drive people to the site, while site search helps people [...]
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