Refining Search

By David McKelvey 

As we continue our march towards a new layout and functions for the search engine, I spent some time recently dropping in a little feature that gives you an easier means to help us help you.

When you do a search and are looking at the results, sometimes you just can’t seem to get the result for which you are looking. Now, directly beneath the page title, you’ll find a little statement that says: “Didn’t find what you were looking for?”

Click on it and a feedback form appears so that you can tell us what didn’t work for you. When you complete it, it also records what you searched for, how the search engine interpreted it, and how many results were found. It bundles all that up and emails us your thoughts (as well as saving it in a database for aggregate analytics later).

Your feedback will help us find the edge cases that stymie you (and us) and in the aggregate will help us continually improve search engine results.

Thanks in advance for helping us.