Search Results Pages Should Show the Most Relevant Result at the Top of the Page
Of all the principles in this guide, this might be the number one no-brainer. Of course, show the user the most relevant results first. Yet, time and again, this principle is broken and users are shown irrelevant items first in their results. So, why have you asked the user to search, then shown them a poor set of results?
Reason 1: Your search algorithm sucks.
Technically, this is the toughest one to solve. Ranking search results is, in some cases, a tricky technical problem, but there are tried and tested technologies (term frequency-inverse document frequency, or TF-IDF, is a very popular algorithm for ranking text documents, for example) and a lot of off-the-shelf search tools will include some sensible defaults.
It’s a difficult task to make your search perform as well as Google’s search does—but that’s what users expect. Users don’t understand that 1,000 years of cumulative effort has gone into Google’s ranking algorithm; they expect your site to rank results just as effectively. Test searches, pore over your site analytics, see what the most popular search terms are, and make damn sure that those results are relevant.
Reason 2: Your filter defaults are bad.
Maybe your results are coming back from the database in a decent ranking, but you’re applying some poorly chosen filters to them—for example, if a user is searching an auction site for items, only to be shown the closest first. It might have seemed like a good idea—because you have the user’s location—but if they’re getting the item shipped, then it’s not relevant and there may be a better, cheaper item further down the list. Pick sensible defaults and show the user which ones you’ve picked, allowing them to change them at will (see #96, Pick Good Defaults).
Reason 3: You’re trying to sell the user something that they don’t want.
A more sinister reason is that many sites will show you the items they want you to see, rather than the items that you want to see. This serves nothing but the internal needs of the organization. It’s a surefire way to enrage users, so don’t do it. You might sell a few more car rentals, but at the expense of irritating most of your customers. Allow users to filter their results how they wish (see #86, Give Users the Ability to Filter Search Results).
Learning points
- Show users the most relevant results at the top of a search results page
- Give users clear controls to modify the results with sort order and filters
- Think like your users—what results would it be best for your users to see first?
