Google says “HELL NAH, MULTI-PAGE” and promises to provide results for view-all over paginated articles.
From the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog:
Therefore, to improve the user experience, when we detect that a content series also contains a single-page version (e.g. page-all.html), we’re now making a larger effort to return the single-page version in search results. If your site has a view-all option, there’s nothing you need to do; we’ll work to do it on your behalf. Also, indexing properties, like links, will be consolidated from the component pages in the series to the view-all page.
This is welcome news for those of us who hate unnecessary pagination of an article. It’s a nice touch that Google’s post includes best practices for making pagination more usable (instead of doing what I’d do, which is to say, “HEY GUYS, your 12-page, 10-image post on the top quarterbacks of all time AIN’T GONNA CUT IT ANYMORE, YO.”)
But what about the pageviews? IS ANYBODY THINKING ABOUT THE PAGEVIEWS?
While dorking out and reading Morville & Callender’s Search Patterns, I came across this sentence:
“A few years ago, results were the only reply. Our goal was a subsecond response. Now, with autocomplete and autosuggest, the results may precede the query.”
From Search Patterns - Peter Morville & Jeffery Callender
This is space-aged, mind reading insanity, if you ask me. AWESOME insanity, but insanity all the same.
Think about it. Through the power of logarithms and the invention of autocomplete, computers – unthinking, non-human computers, completely dependent upon input entered by real humans who can think and reason and instinctively make cross-subject associations – are giving us suggestions as to what we might want BEFORE WE EVEN FINISH telling them what we might want.
I’m not going to go into the technology behind logarithmic search results and prediction, because I’m certainly not smart enough to understand it and, let’s face it, we’re so used to this kind of thing that we’re surprised it doesn’t happen more.
I’m just saying we should stand back a few steps and realized what we’ve created: an alternate form of memory that remembers things we often can’t remember on our own. We depend on things like search and autocomplete and autosuggest to fill in the spaces between our mind’s memories and the concepts we are aware of but can’t find time to memorize.
And this dependence upon autocomplete may be leading to a lack of confidence when applying memory to non-autocomplete sectors. Like, you know, MOST OF REGULAR LIFE.
We use autocomplete and autosuggest to get “sort of close” to our targets, accepting that Google will bridge the gap. We no longer need to spell things correctly. (Another auto – “auto spellcheck” – is guilty here.) And when we’re forced to find answers without autocomplete, we find ourselves slowing down. There’s no confidence in our answer. We’re lost without a back-up.
There’s no answer to this problem, either. Autocomplete and autosuggest are saviors in an era of overstimulated information feeds. Our minds are simply too occupied to remember everything, and – thankfully – we don’t have to anymore.
Thankfully. And cautiously.
We don’t really know what we’re forgetting until we’re given a chance to forget it all over again.
(Originally posted at Black Marks on Wood Pulp.)
With search testing comes the need for original, unrelated words.
The goal, of course, is to make sure a Web site’s search function works. You throw unrelated words in, of course, so you can search for them. And while the standard “SearchTest” will bring up a series of specifically coded pages, that word is boring.
A total yawnfest, you guys. And predictable, which, apparently, my former ad agency self won’t allow.
So I apparently go for the angular. A recent set of test search words: “Waldo.” “Kraken.” “Yeti.” “Kilroy’s Revenge.” Sharp corners. Weird combinations.
Look at that. It’s like a Styx album threw up on your computer, right? I contend it could be part of a new phonetic alphabet.
Either way, I’m not far away from assigning search terms to the more memorable Final Fantasy elementals, or John Tenta wrestling aliases, and when I get to that point I fear I’ll have gone too far. Please keep me in your thoughts.
(Originally posted at Black Marks on Wood Pulp.)
