February 04, 2011

Search Dropdown

Last Thursday, we refined the search dropdown to show only recommended links, rather than the top few search engine results. When we first introduced the recommended results atop the search engine results, we didn’t have enough keyworded terms to make this useful for the dropdown, but we do now. (Nonetheless, we’re sure to need more, as things are always changing, so let us know if you find an area where a new keyword could help.) Today, we are updating the sear…

By David McKelvey

 

Last Thursday, we refined the search dropdown to show only recommended links, rather than the top few search engine results. When we first introduced the recommended results atop the search engine results, we didn’t have enough keyworded terms to make this useful for the dropdown, but we do now. (Nonetheless, we’re sure to need more, as things are always changing, so let us know if you find an area where a new keyword could help.)

Today, we are updating the search dropdown with the ability to search for people. You will now see little icons adjacent to each dropdown item indicating if it’s a site or a person. If the person is a professor, clicking the name will take you to their faculty page. Otherwise you will go to their entry in the search engine, where you can get all their contact information. (We tried showing the email and extension, but it made the list too crowded.)

This two updates are part of an ongoing series of updates we’re doing to the search engine this semester. As always, if you have ideas how the search engine could improve, please contact us:)