[Sigia-l] Random Search Results

[Ziya Oz]

William Bakker:

> randomized search results

Because BC is one of the three places on my agenda to visit next , I'll
bite. ;-)

Your site doesn't tell us, as is, how the resultset is sorted. What's the
minimum/default expectation of the user? I don't see that alpha sort is
necessarily relevant here. If I search for, say, "skiing" how should the
result set be sorted? By proximity? Size? Payment to you? Popularity? Etc.
Should you ask the user for sort order before you return results? IOW, you
really have to define what's relevant, when, to whom, and then sort on it.

When I searched for "skiing" I got nearly 500 results. I don't know what it
was based on. But it'd be a complete waste of my time to go through 500
items. Categories, pre-configured choices, etc would have helped. You expect
the user to do too  much.

----
Ziya

"If I had asked my customers what they wanted,
they would have asked for a faster horse." -- Henry Ford