internal search (Lucene), global/cross-servers search (Google), and a general ramble about search results

Posted by Graham Perrin on Sep 11, 2009; 7:09am
URL: https://support.nabble.com/Dislike-search-results-from-Google-tp3584184p3624035.html

Thanks for the reassurance :-)

Maybe update Nabble - Powered by... to include Google search alongside Lucene?

Part of what I love about Nabble search results is probably thanks to Lucene. The other part that I love — the clean, simple, minimalist, restrained appearance — is surely thanks to Nabble. The appearance lends itself extremely well to speed-reading and the minimalism is never a barrier to finding something quickly.

I recall reading somewhere that a magic number '3' applies to people's perceptions of Google search results. Something like: if the result is not in the top (uppermost) three, then that result may be overlooked or ignored.

What's interesting here in Nabble is that a higher magic number '10' (results per page) seems to work very well. All ten are easily scanned and when searching becomes complex, I never feel that I'm wasting my time. The absence of images certainly helps.

(In another environment (Diigo) I'm pleading for appropriate use of well-sized thumbnail images (echoing what I like about Glims thumbnail enhancements to Safari, and uses of thumbnails in many other environments), but the Diigo use case is very different; most content there is abstracted from web pages that have a 'look and feel'.)

Thanks as always,
Graham