[Sigia-l] RE:Why label Best Bets in the hit list?

[Eric Scheid]

From: rich at richardwiggins.com <rich at richardwiggins.com> (1/10/02 12:06 PM)

>This is an important question, I think.  My answer is because it's important
>to identify for the user what they are looking at, even if 98% of users
>don't care.  We're identifying that the first results you see were picked by
>humans, not by the arbitrary whims of robots.

Along with the consideration of pointing out the *virtues* of the best 
bet links (ie. hand picked by etruscan monks), I suspect it's also 
important to pre-emptively explain their appearance. More exactly, to 
explain why those results -- which may *NOT* have the keywords you 
searched for -- were found anyhow.

Doing a search and getting back a result which *doesn't* actually include 
your exact search term can be a bit unsettling. Makes one wonder if the 
search engine is broken.

Same goes for thesaurus augmented searches, I guess.

>To me, there is still a labeling obligation.  Just as Google labels
>"Sponsored Links" but does so subtly, labeling what the federated results
>are by type is the right thing to do.

An ethical question: should we bother explaining why (transparency), even 
though they don't want to know (usability)?

e.

______________________________________________________________________
eric at ironclad.net.au                 i r o n c l a d   n e t w o r k s
information architect                      http://www.ironclad.net.au/