Simon Smith — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 18:22:06 GMT

Enjoyed the Article, Though provoking:)

Would it be fair to say that the way search engines operate has affected the way that we search, making exploratory search more common, even for known item.

To take the example of the known item, if using a web search engine, my experience is that even if you know what you are searching for you enter one or two words related to your requirements, see what you get, refine the search terms slightly and so on. This is because entering a very precise query often either returns no results or the, engine is “confused” by other words in the string and returns many only loosely related items. Therefore you are using “exploratory” methods to find or re-find known items.

Regardless of how you seek the information, I think that the most effective way of meeting search requirements is a degree of personalisation. If you know who a person is in terms of what they have searched for previously, how they search and can derive an understanding of the intent of the query, but also understand the relationship between query and answer you can deliver a much better answer much quicker.

Boxes and Arrows: Comments by Simon Smith