Symptom: Your users have no clue why certain items were returned
Ever get a search result set and not be sure if you’ve gotten what you were expecting? That can happen no matter how hard you work on your site’s data and metadata – but you can reduce the times it happens. You have to give enough information so they know whether a link is relevant to their search.
Your first line of defense (offense maybe) is your document and product titles. Brief, meaningful, descriptive titles go a long, long way in helping your customers know whether they ought to click on a link in a result set or not.
Another possibility is to write descriptions in such a way that the first sentences both identify the product and differentiate it from other products.
A more recent trend is the use of roll-overs that actually give a small snapshot preview of the page that you about to click on. Not only is that “cool,” It gives users more information to make a decision without making them leave the current search page.
Read other ways to know if your internal site search engine has a problem…
