> The most likely impact for us is in upcoming modifications to our own > search.
... > Do we give up, and acknowledge > that doing search in any way different from Google is a) now competing more > directly with them, and b) probably just getting more confusing for most > visitors; or do we focus on these (probably fewer and fewer) visitors who > come to our search expecting it to work just the way it should, not the way > that's easiest? Hmm, very interesting point. I'm sure I'm not alone in saying that we spend far far less time looking at our search interface than we ought to. Our site search is powered by a Google Mini, and other than providing thumbnails object pages returned, it's pretty much working in its out-of-the-box configuration. We haven't invested any time in editorially 'promoting' results for certain search terms, for instance, or in setting up synonyms. In fact, this discussion has prompted me to do a quick report of the most popular search terms, which are: 1. games - 1,1012 2. grain strain (old game) - 498 3. jobs - 488 4. wroughton (object storage site) - 474 5. search - 447 (amusing this is the default search text, so represents people pressing search without typing anything) 6. launchball - 280 7. opening times - 252 (shockingly, this doesn't return anything hugely useful, and so 11% try refining their search) 8. bbc micro - 202 (in the news recently, but only returns press releases) 9. builder - 192 (no idea what this is about) 10. energy - 150 (presumably teachers looking for energy microsite) This data is for the last month, and was gathered by the excellent 'site serch' function which can be set up in Google Analytics (which allows you to monitor search terms, regardless of which search technology you use). Generally, I site search seems to be hugely neglected by website owners (mea culpa), which is presumably why people are turning to Google more and more. Frankie
