Carl Smith // January 21, 2010

From the Archives Chapter 2 - Practice What You Preach

Just so everyone knows, I am a fan of Jakob Nielsen. I’ve recently been studying different viewpoints on when and how to best implement an effective search feature into your website. Obviously Jakob was part of this research and after reading something in his new book I wanted to see if he had followup info on his site.

When I got there I was pretty shocked to find out his site consistently violated one of the rules he harped on in his new book.

According to Jakob, here are the top three things users expect from search:

1. A box where they can type words
2. A button labeled search that they click on to run the search
3. A list of top results that’s linear, prioritized, and appears on a new page

OK, the search box is the focus of what got me puzzled. On the next page of the book Jakob says, “The (search) box should definitely be on the homepage, but ideally it will be on every page of the site.” The alternative to the search box would be a link that just takes you to a search box. I agree with him, that’s pretty pointless.

He then goes on to say, “when Search is not a box, users tend to overlook it.” Yep, that makes sense too. Any idea what happens next?

You got it, on Jakob’s own site he doesn’t pay attention to this rule. The search feature on his site (located in the upper right) switches from a box to a link on a whim. It even switches within sections. It’s not based on a date, because some articles from 2002 have the box, and then some from 2003 don’t.

A lot of people have had fun picking on useit.com. And obviously there are a lot of things that could be improved. But why wouldn’t he follow his own rules?

I’ll still follow the research he’s done because I really believe in it. I just wish he would too.