Ambient Findability

For an information architect with library roots, what's next is obvious: ambient findability. I want to be able to find anything, anywhere, anytime.

Morville, Peter. Semantic Studios (2002). Articles>Information Design>Search

Are You Using the Right Search Engine?

What this all means is that when web users can't find what they want in Google, they should not automatically assume that they're at fault. At present, Google is heavily weighted.

Bennaco (2004). Articles>Information Design>Search>Search Engine Optimization

Effective Search Engine Submission Strategies

Now that you've got a website it's time to start thinking about promoting it. Search engine listings are the number one way to generate traffic to your website.

stevenforsyth.com (2005). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>Search Engine Optimization

Getting to "the Right Stuff"

In a world awash with information, finding what you really want can be difficult. Any database or web index can deliver a set of results. But it's particularly difficult to highlight the most relevant 'stuff.' Web search engines such as Google and Yahoo try their best to recommend some items over others, and now libraries are trying to do this for their holdings.

Tennant, Roy. Library Journal (2005). Articles>Information Design>Search

The Google Sandbox and How To Get Out

The Google Sandbox is a filter that was put in place in about March of 2004. New websites with new domain names can take 6 to 12 months to get decent rankings on Google. Some are reporting stays of up to 18 months. The Sandbox seems to affect nearly all new websites placing them on probation. Similarly, websites that have made comprehensive redesigns have been caught up in this Sandbox. Does this Sandbox Really Exist, or is it just part of the Google algorithm? This has been a big controversy with many different opinions. Most now believe that this is an algorithm. In either case, the Sandbox functions to keep new sites from shooting to the top of Google in just a few weeks and overtaking quality sites that have been around for many years. This appears to be an initiation period for new websites.

Williams, Doug. stevenforsyth.com (2006). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>Search Engine Optimization

Google Search Engine Optimisation and their 80/20 Rule

Google's increasing use of anti-spam features has meant that optimising websites for Google has become much harder and it's now not just a case of opening your websites source files in notepad, adding some keywords into your various HTML tags, uploading your files and waiting for the results. In fact in my opinion and I'm sure others will agree with me, this type of optimisation, commonly referred to as onpage optimisation will only ever be 20% effective at achieving rankings for any keywords which are even mildly competitive. Those of us who aced maths in school will know this leaves us with 80% unaccounted for.

Callan, David. stevenforsyth.com (2005). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>Search Engine Optimization

The High Cost of Not Finding Information  

In an increasingly information-based world, we turn out complex products that are less tangible than they are knowledge-based. The very complexity of the decisions we make and the products we manufacture makes it impossible to check, test and retest them adequately enough to be sure that they will function properly in any circumstance. Information disasters are a growing threat, and one that few businesses can ignore.

Feldman, Susan. KMworld (2004). Articles>Knowledge Management>Information Design>Search

An Information Retrieval Using Conceptual Index Term For Technical Paper on Digital Library

This paper presents a method for semantic Information Retrieval(IR) which is implemented on Digital Library. It is well known that Digital Library should have the IR system that user may automatically access every kind of media from anywhere. However, no improvement is made for the retrieval errors based on individual differences of user's request. This is one of the significant problem for the searching efficiency of IR. Our approach does not use the request itself but the concepts. This makes it possible to retrieve semantic information not merely to compare with the word strings of the request.

Horii, Chinatsu, Masakazu Imai and Kunihiro Chihara. ISRDP in Digital Libraries (1997). Articles>Information Design>Semantic>Search

Judgment Day: Google Strikes Back

Google has never cared for search engine optimization and has always looked at it as an attempt to taint what they hold as precious. The question that must be asked is, 'Why?' Why does Google see search engine optimization as the enemy and are they justified in their thinking?

Angeletti, Mark. Search-This (2003). Articles>Information Design>Search>Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization: Getting Started

Explain some of the first steps to get your website not only optimized for the search engines, but to push your website up in the rankings war.

Garite, Joe. stevenforsyth.com (2006). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>Search Engine Optimization

SEO Outbound Link Relevance

Outbound links' anchor text affects a page's search engine ranking in much the same way that inbound links' anchor text affects search engine ranking.

Walsh, Joel. stevenforsyth.com (2006). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>Search Engine Optimization

SQL Cookbook: Advanced Searching  

Some types of searching operations stand apart from others in that they represent a different way of thinking about searching. Perhaps you're displaying a result set one page at a time. Half of that problem is to identify (search for) the entire set of records that you want to display. The other half of that problem is to repeatedly search for the next page to display as a user cycles through the records on a display. Your first thought may not be to think of pagination as a searching problem, but it can be thought of that way, and it can be solved that way; that is the type of searching solution this chapter is all about.

Molinaro, Anthony. O'Reilly and Associates (2001). Articles>Information Design>Databases>Search

Strategies for Improving Enterprise Search

Acquiring and installing a search engine is just the beginning of creating an effective enterprise search system. John Ferrara walks us through strategies for addressing critical aspects of the user experience often overlooked or ignored.

Ferrara, John. Boxes and Arrows (2007). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>Search Engine Optimization

Trovabile

Trovabile raccoglie risorse sui temi della trovabilità (Findability), con particolare riguardo alla teoria della classificazione e alla classificazione a faccette.

Trovabile (2001). (Italian) Articles>Information Design>Search

Using Search Profitably

As an information source, the Internet is amazing. No matter what the topic, chances are you can find out all about it on the 'net. However, as the information haystack gets bigger, finding that crucial needle of data can become a frustrating challenge. Here are some simple tips for finding what you want.

Bennaco (2005). Articles>Information Design>Search

The Information User: Past, Present and Future    

The emergence of research on various aspects of `information behaviour' is explored and its growth as a subject of academic research is documented. The origin of the field as a potential aid to the development of library and information services is noted, as is the transition from this status to that of a subject for research at PhD level and beyond. The development of the field has thus led to a division between the needs of academia for theoretically grounded work, and the needs of the field of practice for guidance for service development. There is, today, a disconnection between research and practice, to a significant extent: early research was undertaken by practitioners but today academic research dominates the scene. Suggestions are made as to how this disconnection can be repaired.

Wilson, Tom. Journal of Information Science (2008). Articles>User Centered Design>Information Design>Search

On the History of Evaluation in Information Retrieval    

This paper is a personal take on the history of evaluation experiments in information retrieval. It describes some of the early experiments that were formative in our understanding, and goes on to discuss the current dominance of TREC (the Text REtrieval Conference) and to assess its impact.

Robertson, Stephen. Journal of Information Science (2008). Articles>Information Design>Assessment>Search

Novel Fuzzy Information Proximity Measures    

As a measure of information shared between two fuzzy pattern vectors, the fuzzy information proximity measure (FIPM) plays an important part in fuzzy pattern recognition, fuzzy clustering analysis and fuzzy approximate reasoning. In this paper, two novel FIPMs are set up. Firstly, an axiom theory about the FIPM is given, and different expressions of the FIPM are discussed. A new FIPM is then proposed based on the axiom theory of the FIPM and the concept of fuzzy subsethood function. Two concepts based on the idea of Shannon information entropy, fuzzy joint entropy (FJE) and fuzzy conditional entropy (FCE), are proposed and the basic properties of FJE and FCE are given and proved. Finally, classical similarity measures such as dissimilarity measure (DM) and similarity measure (SM) are studied, and two new measures, fuzzy absolute information measure (FAIM) and fuzzy relative information measure (FRIM), are set up, which can be used as measures of the proximity between fuzzy sets A and B.

Ding, Shi-Fei, Shi-Xiong Xia, Feng-Xiang Jin and Zhong-Zhi Shi. Journal of Information Science (2007). Articles>Information Design>Databases>Search

Judgments During Information Seeking: A Naturalistic Approach to Understanding the Assessment of Enough Information    

In this article, theories of human judgement and decision making are reviewed and their use by library and information science researchers examined. A different perspective on judgement and decision making is offered by the field of naturalistic decision making (NDM) and the implications of this approach are considered for an expanded understanding of how judgements and decisions are made during information seeking. This discussion is illustrated by a case from a recent empirical investigation into how judgements of enough information are made in the workplace. The article concludes with a critical evaluation of the NDM approach. It is argued that NDM, a recent development in decision theory, offers a new perspective from which to investigate judgements and decisions during information seeking.

Berryman, Jennifer M. Journal of Information Science (2008). Articles>Information Design>Search>User Centered Design

Intelligent Site Structure for Better SEO!

Search engines are one of the most important traffic drivers to sites these days, which is why Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is becoming more and more important. SEO is often thought to be just a set of some technical tricks, and as a professional SEO, I confess to spending a lot of time with clients fixing technical issues. A site's structure though, is just as important. Your site's structure determines whether a search engine understands what your site is about, and how easily it will find and index content relevant to your site's purpose and intent. By creating a good structure, you can use the content you've written that has attracted links from others, and use your site's structure to spread some of that "linkjuice" to the other pages on your site.

De Valk, Joost. Opera (2008). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>Search Engine Optimization

Metadata and Search

The 2003 Dublin Core Conference took as its basic premise that "Metadata is fundamental to persons, organizations, machines, and an array of enterprises that are increasingly turning to the Web and electronic communication for disseminating and accessing information." One of the reasons metadata is receiving such attention is its role in facilitating information seeking.

Crystal, Abe and Paula Land. Dublin Core (2003). Articles>Information Design>Metadata>Search

Web Search: How the Web Has Changed Information Retrieval

Topical metadata have been used to indicate the subject of Web pages. They have been simultaneously hailed as building blocks of the semantic Web and derogated as spam. At this time major Web browsers avoid harvesting topical metadata. This paper suggests that the significance of the topical metadata controversy depends on the technological appropriateness of adding them to Web pages. This paper surveys Web technology with an eye on assessing the appropriateness of Web pages as hosts for topical metadata. The survey reveals Web pages to be both transient and volatile: poor hosts of topical metadata. The closed Web is considered to be a more supportive environment for the use of topical metadata. The closed Web is built on communities of trust where the structure and meaning of Web pages can be anticipated. The vast majority of Web pages, however, exist in the open Web, an environment that challenges the application of legacy information retrieval concepts and methods.

Brooks, Terrence A. Information Research (2003). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>Search

Readability, Browsability, Searchability Plus Assistance

Readability, browsability, and searchability do not have to be equally represented in every information system. As your collection of information increases, different aspects of these qualities take on greater significance. Thus, the amount of readability, browsability, and searchability your information system exhibits depends on the type and quality of your collected data, as well as the information needs of your clientele.

Morgan, Eric Lease. Infomotions (2004). Articles>Information Design>Usability>Search

Semantics Continues to Not be RDF, But Enrichment, Classification and Taxonomy

Within the realm of computational semantics, there is still a fairly broad disconnect between triple pair semantics, the use of RDF (or turtle notation) to create atomic assertions, and the realm of semantics as reflected on the web. I do not expect this to change much in 2009, save perhaps that the gulf between the two will likely just get wider.

Cagle, Kurt. O'Reilly and Associates (2009). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>Search