Helen Martch
PSY 422 Homework #2

Keyword used in search: Usability

Search Engine Results

Excite

• Total hits:
  • 26582 web pages found
  • 30 news articles
  • 3 related-topic suggestions in their "Web Site Guide"
     
• Relevant links: The top 5 web site matches were the following:

  66% Usability First  - Usability First brings a vast variety of usability resources to the web.
  http://www.usabilityfirst.com/
  

  64% Usability Professionals' Association  - The 1999 conference will be in Scottsdale, Arizona, June 29-July 2,1999. The advance program is now available. Mark your calendar! Order your usability books now from the Amazon.com link from this site.
  http://www.upassoc.org/
  

  62% Usability Pro  - Im Software-Markt von heute stehen die Zeichen der Zeit auf "Benutzungsfreundlichkeit". "Usability" ist zu einem Schlagwort für Aktivitäten geworden, die das Ziel haben, die Benutzungsfreundlichkeit von Software mit Methoden der Software-Ergonomie zu verbessern.
  http://www.usability.de/
  

  62% CMC Magazine: January 1999  - Please visit our sponsor: Advertising Info CMC Magazine: January 1999 http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1999/jan/toc.html A publication of December Communications, Inc.
  http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/current/toc.html
  

  61% Inov Information Designs: Usability Evaluations, Information Architect...  - Inov Information Designs is a web design and consultancy company dedicated to improving the usability of information systems. We work with web sites as well as stand-alone software applications. Contact info@inovdesigns.com for more information
  http://www.inovdesigns.com/
  

• My opinion of Excite's results:

  All the provided links clearly were appropriate for the keyword, however, the third highest link was to a site that, other than it's title, was entirely in German. This makes me a little suspicious of the usefulness of all the sites identified by the "26582 hits". The inclusion of the "Web Site Guide" referring to related topics is something that could be quite helpful. And I like that they've separated news articles into their own grouping. Also, the percentages given to rank the relevance of the site to the topic, while not highly descriptive can still be a useful guide.

Dogpile

• Total hits: Dogpile searches in other search engines and results are grouped by where Dogpile found the listing:
  • GoTo.com: 10 or more documents
  • Thunderstone: 4780 documents
  • Yahoo: 69 documents
  • Mining Co.: 98 documents
  • Excite Guide Search: 110 documents
  • Lyco's Top 5%: 2 documents
  • WebCrawler: 981 documents
  • Magellan: 1264 documents
  • What U Seek: 80 documents
  • Infoseek: 60203 documents
  • Excite Web Search: 26582 documents
  • Lycos: 91 or more documents
  • Alta Vista: 76116 documents
     
  • Grand Total: 170386 documents found by Dogpile
     
• Relevant links: The top listing on the first five search engines on Dogpiles list were:

  From GoTo.com:
  Icongarden - User Experience Design icongarden design offers effective, enjoyable and easy-to-use web presence design services including consulting, usability studies, market analysis and more.
  http://www.icongarden.com/

  From Thunderstone:
  Welcome
  Welcome to desktopsupport.com!
  www.desktopsupport.com - Usability Sciences Corporation - Irving TX
  

  From Yahoo:
  Usability Management, Inc. - consulting company specializing in software usability.

  From Mining Co.:
  Web Usability - HTML Net Links
  Find out how to make your site more usable and useful for your readers, from your Mining Co. Guide.
  From the MiningCo GuideSite: html.miningco.com

  From Excite Guide Search:
  useit.com: Jakob Nielsen's site (Usable Information Technology) 
  Review: Jakob Nielsen's Web site about creating usable information technology.
  http://www.useit.com/

• My opinion of Dogpile's results:

  This does seem to be a quick way to find a lot of results but as each of the search engines that Dogpile searches probably include a number of the same links, the Dogpile numbers seem to be rather inflated. Dogpile shows the "top" results from each of the other sources. The links are grouped by what search engine they came from, not their overall relevance to the searched topic. If you are just searching a topic out of curiosity, this approach might be appealing since it gets you a lot of results quickly that you can poke through. But if you are looking for something in particular, this approach is too fragmented to be very appealing. If the best site is not listed by the first couple of search engines that Dogpile lists, you may have to go through a number of Dogpile's listing pages before you find the best source for your search.

Britannica

• Total hits:
  • 2 reviews in the Britannica database
     
• Relevant links:

  GVU's WWW User Surveys (2 stars - Recommended)
  Georgia Institute of Technology
  Results of biannual surveys of World Wide Web users by the Graphics, Visualization and Usability Center at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
  

  Hermes: A Research Project on the Commercial Uses of the World Wide Web (1 star - Noteworthy)
  Organization based at the University of Michigan. Includes the biannual World Wide Web User Survey, conducted in partnership with the Graphics, Visualization & Usability Center at Georgia Tech, and other projects seeking to measure growth of the Web.
  

• My opinion of Britannica's results:

  Britannica subtitles their site with the line "The Web's best sites, chosen by our editors." Given the reputation and quality of Encyclopedia Britannica, this fosters a lot of confidence in the quality of information to be found using the Britannica site. While they lack the quantity of other search engines, the links they do provide have been reviewed before being added to Britannica's database. However, as one generally turns to the Web for research desiring a range of sources, Britannica's offering is very limited.

Conclusion

Given the broad topic of usability, one would hope to find a wide variety of web sites to cover various aspects of the concept. However, it helps if the information is somewhat organized to make the research go more smoothly. Comparing Excite, Dogpile and Britannica, Excite provides the best combination of quantity and organization to conduct a successful search.

While Britannica would be useful as a secondary source, when looking for verification of facts perhaps, it does not have the breadth to be very useful as a primary search tool. Dogpile provides plenty of quantity, but without a uniform system to rank site relevance and the lack of useful organization, it has the potential to make the research more difficult rather than easier.

Excite's percentage-based site relevance rankings; its "Web Site Guide," "Web Results," and "News Articles" division of search results; and the overall quantity of sites available make it the most useful of these three search engines.