First Step in Fixing Search
Today, we start a new way to present search results on our site. The results are much more targeted, give preference to headlines both in print and online, and should replace the admissions our search was “broken.”
News is the only result type in search for now.
As we get feedack, we’ll add back relevant topics like events, directory listings, etc. This is the first step in what has already been a big process… one we knew we needed to undertake.
After you use the search, we’d love your feedback via this blog entry’s comments, e-mails, Twitter, etc. if you have time.
As always, your voices will be heard.
If you care to know about product thinking, please read on.
The Back Story, and Why the Change
There are over 70 vendor relationships and about 10 platforms used to bring charlotteobserver.com to life. One of our main roles over in the Observer Interactive group is to take all these relationships (and others not listed) and conduct the orchestra. Sometimes we pull off trying new things well, sometimes we are not as successful.
Search on the site is one of those times we’re looking for a do-over, and there were plenty of moving parts that made the challenge take longer than we’d hoped. Rather than point fingers, we’ll accept the blame — we took feedback to better the user experience, and the total implementation stunk.
Previously, the now-former charlotte.com had a presentation that segmented all search results, by different categories, into little boxes. Sometimes the most important results were at the bottom of the page.
We believed — and still believe given user testing done then and now — that people prefer a single set of results that are presented most relevant to possibly least relevant.
So in that preference we pushed our relationships with vendors and platforms to match the above thinking of Google. And, well, Google’s kind of good at the search thing. And the technology/engineers are pretty good, too. And our collective team of internal and external folks was honestly not ready.
The technologies used didn’t do the job efficiently. There were errors in parsing, meaning stories showed up more than once or sometimes not at all.
With the help of those partners, new thinking, and new technologies, we’ve rebuilt the news part to start. And as stated earlier, more is to come.
Thank you for your understanding as we worked through some of the craziness.
-Jason