Fix the Search Interface First
Barry Diller wants Ask.com to grow market share. I’m sure there’s lots to be done on improving distribution deals, the crawler, back-end algorithms, etc., but how about starting with some simple, obvious UI fixes? Here are the results of a search for “Search Engine” on the 4 majors:
At 1024×768, the UI differences are glaring. I’ve marked the ads in red and the information of dubious value in blue. The green checks indicate relevant, high-quality results.
To the average surfer, the info in white is all that matters. Note to everyone else except Google – fix the UI first – it’s the low-hanging fruit.
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I have to agree. Google understands the value prop to it’s users better than the other search sites.
Peter O
December 22, 2005 at 3:45 am
amen. i’ve been saying this for awhile…its amazing how bad the user experience is on google’s direct competitors.
chad
December 23, 2005 at 7:30 am
Nice observation, but some users may actually also decide on the quality of results. Having ignored anything apart from Google, I have found offlate that Yahoo Search actually yields more precise results. Yet a cleaner search UI page almost always lets me Google first.
Debashish
December 29, 2005 at 1:51 pm
Where is the rss feed on this website???
P
December 31, 2005 at 5:44 pm
I’ve added an XML button in the upper right. You can also go to:http://www.startupboy.com/journal/rss.xmlThanks for subscribing!
StartupBoy
January 2, 2006 at 9:12 am
This is not really a fair/realistic comparision. Try a commercial query like digital camera, or even a search for "photo hosting" etc. You’ll see that google has ton of ads.
Ravi Dronamraju
March 14, 2006 at 4:43 pm
Ravi,True, commercial queries are a mess everywhere. Also note that Ask and MSN have radically improved their UIs since this posting.
StartupBoy
March 14, 2006 at 4:52 pm