inter:digital strategies

A few weeks ago, I blogged about a new search-engine-in-training called Mojeek. This engine, essentially nothing special, had a neat idea to provide users with a choice of search algorithms. Unfortunately, this apparently one-man operation hasn’t yet gotten off the ground with the idea.

Nevertheless, customizable search is becoming de rigueur for the search industry. Customized searching is a great idea, fundamentally. However, I do have some doubts about the universality of the application. Developing a customizable search interface which makes it easy for a search to be refined and saved is not something I’ve seen yet.

MSN has recently announced their fancy new search tool: "Search Macros". This is a fundamentally neat idea with a fundamentally flawed interface.

Search Macros are a feature of Live Search that make results more relevant for a given search topic. This is done by easily using, creating and sharing customized sets of search engine rules.

If these macros were truly easy to share, I’d be thrilled. If they were easy to create, I’d be even more excited. Frankly, if they were easy to USE, I’d be pretty satisfied. But I don’t see that as being the case. Criticism number one: how do I become aware of this service?

I actually learned of this service reading industry news posted at SearchEngineWatch. I’m sure this isn’t how the average user will learn about it - so why don’t I go poking around looking for other options. A great first look? Windows Live. It’s a search option for this engine, so of course this information will be available there, right!

Well, it’s not right there on the front page. OK, I’ll do a search and see if it’s presented as an option to refine my search. No. I don’t see any links here on the page that say anything like "refine search" or "advanced options" - I wonder what this little blue arrow does in the tool bar? Oh! There it is! It opens up a menu giving the option to create or find macros.

Well, the tool is definitely losing on ease to find - and, thinking as a member of the general public, I might be wondering at this point what a "macro" might be. But, fortunately, I’m a firm believer in the "click first, ask questions later" philosophy, so I’m going to go ahead and find a macro, whatever it may be. I’ve now learned about the service! On to complaint number two: how do I use this?

Well, I’m now on a completely separate site. I wonder why I need to deal with a completely different look for this tool? Does it also apply to other services? Well, it’s pretty easy to figure out. All these graphics with gear-like doohickeys must take me to macros. Not much information here - I wonder what "saltbaby.nadasurf" will help me find?

This is the place where you can view and install shared search macros from Live.com.

Complete first page explanation of the Live.com Macro Gallery

Ah! Well, now that I’ve clicked on that, I can see it’ll help me find info about the band Nada Surf. Well, I don’t care about that, I’ll go back. "Research.scholar" is probably more up my alley. This looks good! I don’t really understand that gobbledy gook down at the bottom, but I bet this’ll help me find great web pages…wait - no, no it won’t. This is searching for PDF formats and other local documents. Well, back to the drawing board.

Essentially, although it’s easy to figure out how to find and install these tools - it’s pretty difficult to see whether something is actually useful. What does this term.term labeling notation mean? Why can’t I narrow to search macros which are topical or document type specific? Well, just to test it, I’ll go ahead and install "beta.wikipedia".

The installation procedure is thankfully pretty easy. Not perfect, but pretty easy. You click on the button labeled "+Live.com" and up pops a new window of Live.com. You still have to notice the little yellow banner which says "Click to Install", and if you do, you’ve now got a macro installed. I now close this new Live.com window and return to my search in progress. And thus on to complaint number three: where’s my macro?

Wait a second - where’s my macro? How do I use this? There’s nothing listed in that drop down list with the blue arrow. Whoops! Looks like these Macros are session specific. Maybe if you’re logged in it’ll remember your details, but if not? Tough luck.

OK, enough criticism of the so-called "ease of use" for Microsoft’s search macro. Now I’ll be moving on to the creation process.

Creating a Search Macro on MSN Live Search

If you’re searching on the main page of MSN Live, that little blue arrow drop down also contains an option to "Create a Macro." I’ve had two different behaviors from this feature: the first and second time I clicked on it it gave me the option to log in to Windows Live using my Microsoft Passport Network login. I passed up this opportunity on both occasions - I’m not interested in creating a Passport account for this. Thankfully, Windows Live must have figured this out, because the third time it took me straight to the "Create Macros" interface. (I’ll be fair: this IS beta software, and I shouldn’t be expecting perfection.)

What I’m told about creating a search macro is this:

Create a namespace for your macros:
(This namespace is unique and will be associated with your Macros. Your macros can be used by others, but they will not be able to associate those macros with you..)

Ah. I see. OK. Hmmm… So, what’s a namespace then? Is this visible? If I decide to be funny and call my Macro something dirty, will people see it? What’s this used for? Clearly, this instruction could use a bit more explanation. There’s lots of space on this screen, and I think they could spare the space for an instruction.

The first thing I tried was to create a namespace using my own first name - Joe. I believe that Windows Live didn’t like that - although I didn’t actually get any kind of error message. The text box was cleared, and that was that.
My second try will be something more complex: joemacro. Same story. Huh. Let me do some research.

To create a macro click "Create Macros" in the dropdown menu on the far right side of the scope bar. (You’ll need to be signed in with your Passport. You’ll automatically be asked to sign in if you aren’t already.)

The first time you create a macro you will see the namespace creation screen. You only get one macro namespace and it will be tied to your Passport. Your namespace will be in the name of all macros you create.

Wait - so I do have to be logged in? Why did it let me do this, then? Why doesn’t it warn me? I’m afraid I’m losing interest!

Conclusions

The fundamental flaw with Search Macros is a lack of communication - the site doesn’t make it clear how to use the tool or what is required to use the tool. Windows Live doesn’t consistently track sessions, it doesn’t pass data back and forth, and changes interfaces halfway through the process. Is it a neat idea? Yep. Is it user friendly? Nope. Could it be user-friendly? Well, we’ll just have to wait and see!

Recently, I joined the forums at Cre8asite, where I’ve been posting fairly regularly. One of the great things about this forum is that it is extremely active in advocating web standards, quality search engine marketing methods, and best practice guidelines for web businesses. There are some fantastic people involved with this forum - and I’m not going to name any names because there are simply too many great people to get started. You can read the forum and find these people at any time.

At any rate, one of the concerns I latched onto early in my web design career was web standards. The early days of the web were a zoo of design rules using custom tags from Netscape or Internet Explorer - and frequently a page could only be viewed using one or the other. Today, the World Wide Web Consortium has established a solid baseline for HTML standards. Are there still non-compliant tags? Yes. Are there non-compliant browsers? Yes. Do you want your site to be filled with these? No.

I’ve found myself making frequent posts at Cre8asite helping people understand the reasons that it makes good business sense to follow web standards. I’ve been referring people regularly to a great article at Adaptive Path which talks explicitly about the business advantages of web standards. As a result, I’ve been giving this further and more in-depth thought myself.

• Faster Development Times

  Got a display issue you just can’t resolve? Validate your code and you can find any errors you’ve made very quickly. If you’ve still got problems, then you may have found a bug - and there are great resources online for most problems you’ll come across.

• Bigger Audiences

  If you’ve got one of those sites which is usable only in IE, you’ve got a problem. You’ve wiped out at least 10% of your potential market. Similarly, if you’ve got a site which isn’t using standards, you may have wiped out several other classes of users - those with alternate devices, such as screen readers, handheld devices, or perhaps some device which hasn’t even been invented yet. Standards checking will ensure that your site at least meets the most basic accessibility guidelines - and can do much more, if you use it right.

• Reduce Costs

  A standards-based site is almost always smaller and leaner than a non-standard site. Eliminating all those pesky FONT tags, spacer gifs and tables can make a big jump in size. If you’ve got a popular site, where you pay excess bandwidth costs on a routine basis this change can be HUGE. If you receive 1000 visitors a day and you shave 10K off your website you’ve saved approximately 300 MB a month. That’s not a huge savings - but the page savings can be quite a bit higher.

• Faster Site

  It’s estimate that the average user will not wait more than 8 seconds for an unknown website to load. On a 56K modem, this is a website with a total page size of about 40k. If you’ve loaded up that 100k version of your company logo without compressing it, then you’re already looking at 20 seconds before your potential customer will even see that logo. Although standards based code won’t save the kind of bandwidth that total speed optimization can, it certainly could save 20 or 30K on a page, shaving several seconds from your download time.

A good search engine optimization program is based around bringing your site a higher conversion rate, not just more traffic or higher rankings. If your site is optimized to give better access to your services or information, you’ve got a better chance of winning that new customer - using valid code is simply one element towards a better business online.

Microsoft has a justified reputation for arrogance. Not only do they produce the buggiest browser on the market, they believe that nobody should use anything else. Seriously, folks - I understand that Microsoft networks are likely to encourage people to use their own products. That’s totally reasonable. However, the logical train of thought would be to offer extra functionality for the favored browser - not eliminate access for alternate browsers.

In this day and age, the web designers mantra should be about accessibility. In my other blog, I’ve recently posted about design for the deaf, accessibility for the learning disabled, and designing for mobile devices. I considered design for alternate browsers, such as Mozilla Firefox or Opera to be so fundamental that it’s incorporated into my core design philosophy. Yet Microsoft considers that 10% of the marketplace to be so insignificant that they will not even allow them to sign up for the system. In fact, that 10% may not even function with the system! Your ads may never be seen by individuals using alternate browsers.

And to add insult to injury, MSN’s official solution was to advise customer service reps and customers to switch to IE6, posts Danny Sullivan, at Search Engine Watch. It’s well worth noting that, according to Tyson Kirksey, IE7 doesn’t function with adCenter either. So, clearly, if you’ve committed the sin of wanting to test IE7, you’ll need to revert to IE6 to use this Microsoft product.

It’s a well known opinion that the majority of tech professionals are inclined to use alternate browsers. Thus, it should have occurred to Microsoft that their disinclination to support these browsers could have a rapid backlash in the tech community. When so many people in the higher-regions of SEO industry discussion immediately notice these problems, the word that gets out is not good.

I think that my opinions are apparent in this article - but Microsoft probably won’t notice.