A closer look at the Binoculars Site Preview of Ask.com
August 13th, 2006
Competition among search engines to “deliver fast and relevant information” is fierce. Companies such as Google, MSN, Yahoo, Lycos, etc. are in a frenzy to grab your loyalty (and your homepage) by shoving down your throat the power of their search algorithms, uniqueness of their results layout and innovativeness of their added features.
When Ask.com reinvented itself in February of 2006 - most visibly with the retirement of Jeeves - they introduced new technologies and features in the hopes of turning around one of the lowest ranked search engines. (For more information about these enhancements, read Richard MacManus’ well-informed post on the subject.)
One such feature, named “Binoculars“, allows the user to see a site preview by rolling over a, you guessed it, binocular icon. With the help of AJAX technology, this thumbnail image appears without refreshing the page. While it’s obviously a cool feature that’s intended set Ask.com apart from the competition, there are some usability and design issues that should be addressed.
I’m sorry to have to break it to all of my fellow web designers out there, but this pixilated 246×260 screenshot is now part of the user’s decision-making process. This also means that it should be part of our design process. Let’s explore how.
- Visual Emphasis of Site - Search engines are used to find a requested contextual or graphical item with varying degrees of specificity. The thumbnail view shifts the focus away from this relevant information to a high-level visual layout of the site. The result is that the user could choose to visit a site because it has the right shade of blue instead of the best information for their search task.
- Inaccurate Previews - According to their FAQs, screen captures are taken periodically and not in real-time. This means that what the user sees is not always what the user gets. The large PDA sale image in the preview is suddenly replaced my something completely unrelated once they click to the site. And even though it’s a technological limitation of Ask.com, do you really want a potential client subconsciously blaming your site for the differences and visit another site? I’m not saying that this will happen, but it’s a consideration because it could happen.
- Product Treatment – Usability principles state that the main reason someone goes to a site is to perform a task, regardless of how targeted or loosely-formed it may be. When the user’s task is to find a product, they’re specifically scanning for details of that product. They want to know how it looks, how it’s used and how it benefits them. Think about the user. They’ll have to click through to see how the product is used and its benefits, but they can see how it looks right in the site preview. And that image can lead them to or away from your site. So, when you’re designing, remember that what looks like a perfect image size of your product on the actual site might look small and inferior in the preview and vice versa.
- Behavioral Interruption – With roughly a decade of search engines behind us in one form or another, users are accustomed to the visual and behavioral aspects of these engines. They know what keywords to search for and how to type them in (and, or, comma, etc.) as well as what to expect in the listed results. Users, including myself, quickly scan the first few words of each result plus any relevant search content (abbreviations, numbers, etc.) and move on to the next listing until they find what they’re looking for. This behavior is fast and effective.
What these binoculars do is place a big stop sign in the middle of the highway. The user has to get out of their almost automatic scanning mode, slowly move the mouse so it hovers over the binocular icon and then view/comprehend the preview image. If it’s not what they’re looking for, they press the gas pedal down to once again get up to scanning speed. This adds time and frustration to their search. There’s a reason Steven Krug titled his usability book, “Don’t Make Me Think”.
Now this analysis is all well and good if it wasn’t for one important question – do people actually use it? I’ve talked to several people in and out of the web profession who consider the “binoculars” preview just a gimmick and nothing more. If that’s true, I just wasted a whole lot of words. But on the other hand, I’m sure there’s someone within the hundreds (or millions) of people reading your search result that consider the preview just a little bit more useful.
So, are the “Binoculars” Site Previews a gimmick or gold? Are they fantastic or just fluff?
What do you think?
20 Comments | 13,910 Views | Design, Usability
Digg this | Bookmark at del.icio.us | E-mail This Post
Trackback:
http://spectorbrain.com/2006/08/13/a-closer-look-at-the-binoculars-site-preview-of-askcom/trackback/
20 Comments Add your own
1. All Blog Headlines | pitt&hellip
August 14th, 2006 at 12:08 am
2. Search For Someone&hellip
August 15th, 2006 at 4:03 am
3. digg / Technology / Upcom&hellip
August 17th, 2006 at 9:11 am
4. Ajaxian » Ask.com&#&hellip
August 18th, 2006 at 8:51 am
[…] With search engines pushing more and more to find that next great feature, you never know what they’ll come up with. When Ask.com decided to shake things up and rework their site, they included “handy binocular functionality” to show a preview of the site. Unfortunately, as is talked about in this new article on SpectorBrain.com, this might not be exactly what web developers had in mind. […]
5. Web 2.0 Stores > Ecommerc&hellip
August 18th, 2006 at 12:51 pm
6. fofRedux - items 0 to 50 &hellip
August 18th, 2006 at 1:57 pm
7. Planet Ajaxian&hellip
August 18th, 2006 at 2:29 pm
8. nextwebgen.com&hellip
August 18th, 2006 at 3:01 pm
9. Planet Web 2.0&hellip
August 18th, 2006 at 3:45 pm
10. web 2.0 log&hellip
August 18th, 2006 at 4:46 pm
11. Nater Kane
August 18th, 2006 at 10:28 pm
I’ve been using the BetterSearch plugin for firefox for quite awhile now, which provides the same type of thumbnail preview to links, on a number of sites, i.e. google, del.icio.us, yahoo, and ask (it’s interesting when the plugin has thumbs that ask doesn’t provide themselves.
the thumb preview is somthing that i use ALL the time, however, the timeliness of the images can be an issue, and i often find myself on the alexa site after updating or finishing a web project requesting them to update their thumb for a particular domain.
one thing i haven’t thought about is actually designing for the thumb preview, because if the overall presentation of highlevel content on a landing page is put together well, then the thumb will look good.
12. Rojo - Ajaxian&hellip
August 19th, 2006 at 2:11 am
13. Jason (spectorbrain)
August 19th, 2006 at 2:07 pm
Nater,
I absolutely agree that if the site is designed well, it should translate well into a thumbnail view. My intended point in designing for the thumbnail is more of a consideration how your site and especially your product(s) will look and possibly be perceived.
If users are searching for something that can be visually represented, such as a product, they might use the thumbnail as the decision-maker instead of the search results listing. It\’s not that one is more accurate or trust-worthy than the other, but I\’m suggesting that the thumbnail should be given the same consideration as SEO is in pre- and post-design/development.
Thanks for the comment and the suggestion for BetterSearch. I\’ll definitely try it.
14. stallionhost.com Ask.co&hellip
August 19th, 2006 at 9:18 pm
[…] With search engines pushing more and more to find that next great feature, you never know what they’ll come up with. When Ask.com decided to shake things up and rework their site, they included “handy binocular functionality” to show a preview of the site. Unfortunately, as is talked about in this new article on SpectorBrain.com, this might not be exactly what web developers had in mind. […]
15. Ajax Blog&hellip
August 19th, 2006 at 10:02 pm
16. Ajax : Ajaxian : Ask.com&hellip
August 20th, 2006 at 3:05 pm
17. Matthew Nuzum
August 22nd, 2006 at 8:38 pm
It looks like the thumbnail is created with Internet Explorer, probably version 6. I did a search that I knew would return a result from my website. The margins on my site show slightly differently between IE and other browsers and therefore I could tell that IE had been used for the screen shot. The view port seems to be a good bit longer and slightly wider than is typical for an 800×600 browser window. The headline on my site is big enough to read at that size but unfortunately the jpeg compression blurs it so that it is indiscernible to a person unless they already know what the headline says.
This feature is good… several other results for my search term link to sites that just contain a whole page of links but no real content. It would be good if Ask.com simply prevented such sites from showing, but baring that, this is the next best thing I guess.
18. Ajaxian » Usability&hellip
October 25th, 2006 at 3:56 pm
19. Ask.com’s Binoculars - &hellip
February 23rd, 2007 at 7:24 pm
20. Stella Veine
June 21st, 2007 at 4:45 am
I love this feature, and use it a lot. This acttualy gives me some clue whats behind the link, before i click. This feature in another constalation appears with Live search, searching through IE search pane and is very useful. I just hope that Google will adopt such a feature even with a disable button.
Leave a Comment
Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed