Web as knowledgebase
Jakob Nielsen says:
Increasingly, the Internet user experience is becoming one of dipping a toe into websites rather than truly "visiting" them. Using search engines as their Web interface, people simply grab query-related nuggets from sites, but don't engage with the sites themselves.
An exception to this is when people are genuinely browsing, rather than searching — flipping around just looking for something unexpected and interesting or amusing. I suspect strong starting points for that are either portals, news sites, or blogs, since all of them have high and ordered fan-out links.
For search engines, becoming the user interface to the Web's embarrassment of riches is good news. It's also good news for users, who can find answers by visiting a few search hits rather than enduring the obscure design and poor navigation found on many sites.
I think you can see the web as being one big freeform knowledgebase. Web servers are the insertion tool and search engines are the query tool.
Viewed like this, the whole thing is ridiculously inefficient and poorly designed, but it probably scales up more than any single system could. It's like a Wiki taken to a new level: anyone can write; anyone can comment; there's no central control. If I feel, say, free memory on Linux is insufficiently explained, I can throw something into the pot and people who want it will find it.
Nielsen sees this as a bad thing for web sites, but I disagree. I do agree with his concrete recommendations about making site easy to search, making it easy to find related data, and so on.
It's bad for people who design awful flash intros, since they're likely to be skipped entirely. Good riddance.
It probably means people will look at less pages from any single site, but I don't see that as necessarily bad. I ask: why are you publishing anything at all? Because you want people to have the information, and/or to have the information from you. I don't see why it makes any difference if they spend more or less time looking for information.
If you're trying to sell something and people find that page immediately rather than by wandering around your site, all the better. If you are trying to push a opinion or establish your credentials in a particular area then search can only help.
posted Tue 17 Aug 2004 in /software/web | link
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