5 ms·

I don’t want users to leave the site and use google. That’s bad UX and DX at the same time as it only increases friction and uncertainty. I want them to believ

by dgb23 5y ago

I don’t want users to leave the site and use google. That’s bad UX and DX at the same time as it only increases friction and uncertainty. I want them to believe that if it is there, they’ll find it with search. But that depends on how good it is and how helpful the feedback is.

amelius 5y ago
Yes, when I'm browsing documentation, e.g. for Python, I don't want to leave the context and type "X Python", where X is what I'm looking for. Also Google searches in that case might give all kinds of irrelevant results, like StackOverflow pages (sometimes useful, but not if I want to read just the documentation), ads, and such. Typing "site:docs.python.org" is also out of the question.
resonious 5y ago
I think this very much depends on what kind of service your site provides, but in many cases I think we can argue that the Google fallback is good UX. It means the user doesn't need to figure out and navigate a new/different search system for each service. If the GP's right and people really do just drop out and use Google every time (even though the target site has a search function), then I think it's hard to argue that it's bad UX. Unless you want to argue that the specific sites' search functions are poorly made.
- dgb23 5y ago
  > Unless you want to argue that the specific sites' search functions are poorly made. You lose trust in the search function very quickly, if you gain it at all. Whether yours is effective and helpful does not only depend on the search implementation but also on whether your site actually has the information (that it should or is assumed to have) to be effective and helpful. A lot of factors come into this, representation, content, design both for search results and for the actual target pages. Now if you have the trust, are helpful and effective, then the UX is drastically improved. For one, search engine results have been degrading. There is _so_much_spam_ out there. Countless SEO sites that just crawl the web and generate crap output to show you ads, some seem to be handwritten as well. It is increasingly probable to get top results that are just presenting "stolen" content in some form or another. You get low effort blog-like posts that are just restating things they read in a discussion that is actually not the primary source, but a generated site, which is referring to the actual information somewhere else. Secondly if you have in-built, decent search people will use it and they will be happy for it, because you'll be presenting them much better suggestions in a better way and you'll do it faster. Think of some of the _best_ sites like MDN. Sure, you might enter the site via DDG or Google (in the former case you'll be searching directly like so: "!mdn [search_term]"). But when you're on the site you'll be happily navigating it via links and search, because it's just a very good site. Other examples of this are: wikipedia, tailwind, clojuredocs, reactjs, hn.algolia... They all have rich content, good search, useful links. It's a very effective combination.
cerved 5y ago
but if the search isn't good enough I'll just go to Google anyway but now you've annoyed me with your own useless site search, which is what always happens
Graffur 5y ago
How is it bad developer experience (DX)?
- dgb23 5y ago
  We don't want to be even more reliant on optimizing for something we have little to no control over right? Maybe this is more of a mindset/approach thing. But I like making things where I can communicate the guarantees and assumptions with confidence. Note I'm not saying we shouldn't care about search engines. They are extremely useful and important. I'm saying if you have the type of content that benefits from being navigated via search, then consider direct control over this.
  - Graffur 5y ago
    Yeah, I suppose there are two ways to think about it: maintaining an outside dependency or offloading that dependency completely.

by dgb23 5y ago

amelius 5y ago

Yes, when I'm browsing documentation, e.g. for Python, I don't want to leave the context and type "X Python", where X is what I'm looking for. Also Google searches in that case might give all kinds of irrelevant results, like StackOverflow pages (sometimes useful, but not if I want to read just the documentation), ads, and such. Typing "site:docs.python.org" is also out of the question.

resonious 5y ago

I think this very much depends on what kind of service your site provides, but in many cases I think we can argue that the Google fallback is good UX. It means the user doesn't need to figure out and navigate a new/different search system for each service. If the GP's right and people really do just drop out and use Google every time (even though the target site has a search function), then I think it's hard to argue that it's bad UX. Unless you want to argue that the specific sites' search functions are poorly made.

dgb23 5y ago
> Unless you want to argue that the specific sites' search functions are poorly made. You lose trust in the search function very quickly, if you gain it at all. Whether yours is effective and helpful does not only depend on the search implementation but also on whether your site actually has the information (that it should or is assumed to have) to be effective and helpful. A lot of factors come into this, representation, content, design both for search results and for the actual target pages. Now if you have the trust, are helpful and effective, then the UX is drastically improved. For one, search engine results have been degrading. There is _so_much_spam_ out there. Countless SEO sites that just crawl the web and generate crap output to show you ads, some seem to be handwritten as well. It is increasingly probable to get top results that are just presenting "stolen" content in some form or another. You get low effort blog-like posts that are just restating things they read in a discussion that is actually not the primary source, but a generated site, which is referring to the actual information somewhere else. Secondly if you have in-built, decent search people will use it and they will be happy for it, because you'll be presenting them much better suggestions in a better way and you'll do it faster. Think of some of the _best_ sites like MDN. Sure, you might enter the site via DDG or Google (in the former case you'll be searching directly like so: "!mdn [search_term]"). But when you're on the site you'll be happily navigating it via links and search, because it's just a very good site. Other examples of this are: wikipedia, tailwind, clojuredocs, reactjs, hn.algolia... They all have rich content, good search, useful links. It's a very effective combination.

cerved 5y ago

but if the search isn't good enough I'll just go to Google anyway but now you've annoyed me with your own useless site search, which is what always happens

Graffur 5y ago

How is it bad developer experience (DX)?

dgb23 5y ago
We don't want to be even more reliant on optimizing for something we have little to no control over right? Maybe this is more of a mindset/approach thing. But I like making things where I can communicate the guarantees and assumptions with confidence. Note I'm not saying we shouldn't care about search engines. They are extremely useful and important. I'm saying if you have the type of content that benefits from being navigated via search, then consider direct control over this.
- Graffur 5y ago
  Yeah, I suppose there are two ways to think about it: maintaining an outside dependency or offloading that dependency completely.