Search Engine Trends

One of the most important pages in a search experience, the search result page, can deeply impact conversion rates. Here I’ll go through different search engine tactics with the help from Smashing Magazine’s article on search engine trends. By going through a wide variety of websites we can conclude some of the best practices from examples other sites have set.

Google Search box, with searched words, remains prominent at top Option to view an “advanced” search page Total number of results shown at top Ajax-driven auto-complete for typed follow-up searches Sponsored links at top and right Paginated results Results titles are large, bold, and hyperlinked Searched words are shown in bold in a page snippet, in context URLs shown in a different color under each result Each result allows options to view “similar” and “cached” Visited links are in a different color Related search phrases listed at bottom Search box with search terms repeated at the bottom “Show options” link opens a sidebar for further filtering of the results Bing Very similar to google but has some differences Lists the user’s “search history” in the sidebar The history to be cleared or turned off The search history remains intact Pagination unit at the bottom of the results page is more user-friendly Pagination rolls over when moused Yahoo Yahoo’s search results page includes a couple of JavaScript-driven enhancements Ajax-driven slide-down unit that appears below the search box when a search query is being typed “Search Pad” which allows the user to record notes on searches “SearchScan” to help protect from harmful websites Youtube easily-accessible filtering options near the top of the search results YouTube search result page lists detailed information Including a thumbnail preview Running time of the clip User rating And age Also if a particular item is part of a series Twitter Offers a very clean, intuitive JavaScript-driven interface that includes “Realtime” results Their page also offers a list of “Trending topics” and a “Search tip” Additionally, Twitter gives the user the option to refresh the page after it detects additional results in real time Digg Each result on the Digg search results page includes the number of comments that have been posted for that particular story In addition to other features that are unique to Digg, including “share” and “bury” Delicious Lists search results in a very simple, list format that includes tags associated with each result Plus the number of times the result has been bookmarked Amazon allows for the results to be sorted based on a variety of methods, including “Bestselling” and “Avg. Customer Review” Amazon’s results page indicates if a book has the “Look Inside” feature Ebay eBay’s search results page  allows for easy filtering via tabs at the top eBay also has the option to view the thumbnail preview images in a different size: Other features unique search results page are the options to change the amount of items displayed per page and the ability to go directly to a specific page by entering a number into a text box Flickr Flickr  displays results by default in a simple grid-based format Flickr also allows the images to be displayed either in a detail-heavy list-style view or inside of a Flash-based slideshow gallery Photobucket Photobucket allows filtering of search results by “Most viewed” and “Most commented”. It also includes a link strangely titled “Follow”, which allows the user to enter their email address to receive notifications when the results for a particular search term are updated. A more appropriate title for this feature would be “Subscribe”, or similar.

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