Megan Manchester wrote:
> Wow, Jenn, this is really great. I had wondered if
> anyone was doing this.
Authority systems with keyword searching of non-preferred terms that either
a) take you directly to the preferred terms or
b) stop and show you the preferred term leaving it another click away
are definitely a piece of the puzzle that needs to be addressed in any
NGC (see how easy it is to fall into TLAs).
I've been a big fan of them in our local work as well.
Caution: be careful about taking the user to a result, the path to
which isn't evident on screen. In other words, if I search for "Canata"
and you return all the "Canada" results that may be great. But if you
*really* wanted "Kanata" then the words "stupid system" might well
escape our user's lips. For you, "stupid system" might then refer to a
search interface from vendor X, while the "preferred term" on my site
might be Vendor Y.
I think we need to *try* to ensure that the results page gives *some*
clue(s) as to how we went from your precisely spelled search values to
our finely crafted result set, especially when the part in between is
otherwise indistinguishable from magic.
Walter Lewis
Halton Hills
Received on Fri Jun 09 2006 - 09:28:06 EDT