Searching under the spotlight
January 15, 2007
I am always interested in how clients present information to the search engines. For example, the importance of that snippet of text which accompanies the title and link is often overlooked. A recent Microsoft study considered the effect different sized snippets had on the user and there’s a round-up on the SearchTank blog.
Perhaps more interesting than the findings on snippet size (conclusion: no huge difference) were more general points on user behaviour when faced with a page of ten results. For example:
On average, users highly agreed with the statement “I expect the information I’m looking for to be in the top five results”
I should think that’s particularly true of long tail searches. The more detailed your search, the more likely the answer is going to appear in the top five.