MSN's misleading user interface
Rebecca from SEOMoz recently shared her user experience with MSN web search. She found it very confusing and puzzling how MSN changes counts when you reach the last page of search results (although you might not even expect it to be the last page because of the estimates you saw on the previous pages).
We, at FirstStop WebSearch, have been working with search engines for the last seven years, and, among the major search engines, MSN/Live.com has always been the most inconsistent in terms of the user experience relating to the last page of search results.
Not long ago they had an effective limit of only 250 results per query. But they would never hide links to pages #26, 27, etc. You could even go as far as page #1000, but those pages would only show a random number (usually two or three) of results which you had already seen on pages 1 through 25. Really strange and perplexing behavior.
Now that they have increased the limit to 1,000 search results per search, you won't see those weird semi-filled pages with search results from previous pages, but the new user interface is still very misleading.
It looks like they try to keep providing web searchers with optimistic estimates until they hit the limit.
The last legitimate page of search results (#100) displays their real estimate of total search results for your query, with links to the "next" pages (despite the fact that those pages don't exist).
As you can see, when you are on page #100, MSN still displays navigation links to pages #101, #102, #103, and #104 as if they could display more results. But we all know it is not true. And at Microsoft they know it even better.
OK. The phrase, "Page 100 of 1,000 results", leaves room for various interpretations. It can be read as: "You are viewing page #100 of the top 1,000 results for your search." So, technically, the phrase is correct. But other pages of MSN search results (which we deal with much more often than with page #100), have trained us to read this phrase as "You are viewing page #100 of the total 1,000 results we have for your search."
What we have here is unsatisfied expectations and a bad user experience.
I understand why MSN/Live displays a maximum of 1,000 search results, and I don't mind it. All major search engines have this limit. What I don't understand is why Microsoft prefers to lie to us and provides us with misleading navigation and status information.
Why do they display links to the "next" page when we are already on page #100 and they know there are no more pages they can display? Why not just be honest and add some warning at the bottom of the last page that they don't provide search results beyond 1,000?
P.S. The good thing is that MSN knows that their search engine is not perfect. And they want to improve it. On some pages, right below the navigation links, you can see their call for feedback: "Are you satisfied with Live Search? Tell us about it". So if you find their user interface misleading, be sure to drop them a line.
Labels: MSN, screen shots
posted by FirstStop at 11:41 AM
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