Search Enhancements, March 2009
Apr 14th, 2009 by sharbrough
What’s a match?
At this point in my search, I want to back up and ask what a “match” is. I mean, what do I have 155,775 of? It’s a combination of two things:
- Indexes with field values matching my search terms. In short, all index fields are “key words.”
- Pages with my search terms on them. Much information at Footnote is in a “text blob” as opposed to fields. This is especially true in the case of newspapers and city directories. We find that 150,000 of our 155,000 “matches” are from these two sources. In those cases, a “match” means that “George” and “Bush” are both on the page.
Search functions are a means, not an end. By that, I intend to say that people are not looking for search results, they’re looking for records or articles. It would be statistically very unusual for me to say, “Ah. 155,775. That’s what I wanted to know.” In general, a person is looking for that submarine patrol report, and not for an intermediate list that includes the thing that is sought, along with thousands of things that are not.
Search designers are aware of this, and they attempt to anticipate the sequence of events that lead the user THROUGH a web searching experience, to the final goal. In the case that we’re demonstrating here, I’ve initiated a “keyword search” and have been presented with two new options.
I can choose one of the titles from the list of many found here. Or I can choose to work in the box at the top of the page, which contains a space for a last name, a first name, and the suggestion that I “Tell us more to get better results.”
That’s kind of a curious term. Why didn’t they give me the better results already? The answer is that the list is long, and they assume that I want a smaller collection than 155,000.
Either option will result in a narrowing of the results. Let’s follow both of these paths in turn.
