Google has announced that it has been working on a new architecture for its search results. There will be no changes to the user interface, but there will be changes to crawling, indexing and ranking.
For once, Google has informed the user community of these changes and also asked for feedback.
The new system can be tested at:
http://www2.sandbox.google.com/and feedback can be given via the
Google Webmaster Central Blog.
More info and comment available at
Search Engine Land.
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Google recently posted a piece on its official blog singing the praises of it cloud-based computing tools:
"Every morning, millions of people wake up to a very refreshing experience at work. They don't see "mailbox is full" errors in their email. They don't worry about backing up their data. They can get to any file they need from any computer, anywhere with Internet access and a browser. They can all access and edit the same documents and spreadsheets at the same time as their colleagues. They use Gmail and Google Calendar at work as fluidly and easily as they use their personal Gmail accounts. They video, voice and text chat with their peers globally as naturally as they send email."
Google refers to the experience of immersing yourself in its online tools as "going Google", and impressively states that entire companies such as Motorola have switched their office software to Google, as well as 1.75 million other businesses, schools and organisations.
To celebrate and publicise the growing phenomenon of "going Google", the search giant have placed a series of bollboard ads in US cities such as New York. Its hopes that these ads will help to reach potential customers that were maybe not as acessible online.
With online apps such as Gmail, Google calendar and Google Docs, Google is in a great position to capitalise on the cloud computing boom that is predicted to sweep the internet and the rest of the computing world over the next few years. It remians to be seen what that other computing giant Microsoft will react with; however its safe to say this - never write off Bill Gates.
Usability of websites is of crucial importance to the effectiveness and conversion so it was interesting for us to have a session with the
Web Usability Partnership yesterday looking at a client's website.
We defined our client's target market and what we'd like to test on the site. WUP then recruited a tester exactly matching our target audience and led a goal-orientated session with the user, looking at relevance of the content, navigational elements and the user's behaviour.
Observations from the session:
- Placing the most important content on a page 'above the fold' - our tester didn't scroll down on any pages for the first 30 minutes so getting your key messages visible without scrolling is hugely important.
- Links - our client's site has many image-based links - our tester missed them all! She even missed many text-based hyperlinks and image-based calls to action int he top left corner of the site. Make links obvious and consistent!
- Home - ensure you have a Home page navigation link.
- Browsers - test your site across multiple browsers - many people still use IE6
- Enquiry forms - if you have an enquiry form, make sure the tone of the form doesn't make people think they're making a commitment to do something - our client's form could be putting off the more casual enquirer.
And most importantly of all, don't make assumptions...about anything...ever! Test & test again!
