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.
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
How things have changed…
http://www.davidmihm.com/blog/google/world/
Starsman Games
June 6, 2012 at 6:26 pm
[...] do not even have to use colors to highlight like other did recently. Just compare it to the distant past of 2005. Back then Google had real results in the visible area. Ask had the most ads but still less than [...]
SEO 2.0 | This is Why Google Search is Dead and What to Use Instead
September 10, 2012 at 11:32 am
Came across this via the New Statesman article (http://www.newstatesman.com/economics/2012/12/dont-boycott-google-because-its-evil-boycott-it-because-its-terrible)
Very interesting reading – thanks. My only comment would be that 1024×768 is a bit outdated!
Sol
December 20, 2012 at 11:36 am
[...] It is nice to see that Yahoo have improved on the user interface from 2005 when comparing to the screenshot from http://startupboy.com/2005/12/20/fix-the-search-interface-first/. [...]
Alternative Search Engines Part 2 of 3 « lepiorz
January 23, 2013 at 9:43 am
[...] vastly improved experience they have offered, and the changes it has made when comparing to 2005 http://startupboy.com/2005/12/20/fix-the-search-interface-first/. If there is anybody out there with earlier examples I would be very interested in seeing [...]
Alternative Search Engines Part 3 of 3 « lepiorz
January 25, 2013 at 10:23 am