[Sigia-l] Random Search Results

[Kenneth Bryson]

Has your sales team ever used the phone book, the yellow pages?

Finding a listing the first time around isn't that hard if all you're
doing is picking a random name, but if you wanted to re-find something
you saw previously, and it's in a completely different place every
single time, you'd simply give up and choose none of the above.

Can't you do some simple usabilty tests with the sales team, setting up
the results to come back randomly and ask them to find something three
times in row?  Impractical, if not impossible.

I'm sure many users will see something, forget to bookmark it, then
come back later and try to find it again.  Bad for business!


-kb

>>> "William Bakker" <william.sigia.l at gmail.com> 2/9/2007 12:11:09 PM
>>>
Hello,

On our travel planning website, we have the ability for users to
search for tourism businesses:
http://www.hellobc.com/en-CA/SearchResultsListings/BritishColumbia.htm?CATID=-1&LOCID=-1&KWDS=&NBY=False&FLID=3&PN=1


These businesses are purchasing listings from us to be featured on the
website. Our sales department is pushing hard for "equitable
rotation", meaning randomize the search results instead of sorting by
alpha. I'm more of a fan to allow more filtering but that doesn't seem
to be a convincing argument. We just implemented this so I don't have
enough data to measure the exposure yet.

Does anybody have any experience with randomized search results and is
there any research data out there you know of?

Regards,

William
------------
IA Summit 2007:  Enriching IA
Rich Information, Rich Interaction, Rich Relationships
March 22-26, 2007, Las Vegas, NV
www.iasummit.org 
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