[Tagdb] vertical search, strong typing amd multi-field queries

[ogjunk-tagdb at yahoo.com]

Copies/pasted that email again...

General web search engine and a service that people _really_ need are different.  People may be willing to spend more time entering information in multiple fields there in order to get high quality results.  Because the former gives SO many results, it's hard to judge whether the top hits are really the best matches, and you get enough hits, that entering a "less structured" is ok.

Also keep in mind that 1 field != unstructured.
See Simpy for example: 
http://www.simpy.com/simpy/FAQ.do#searchSyntax
http://www.simpy.com/simpy/FAQ.do#searchFieldsLinks

One input field, but many search fields, and many search operators == lots of search power.

Or, create what most other services create - simple + advanced search, and monitor their use.  I think I recall reading something on Tim Bray's blog about only 2% of users using advanced search.... but that was several years ago.

Otis

----- Original Message ----
From: Nitin Borwankar <nitin at borwankar.com>
To: tagdb at lists.tagschema.com
Sent: Thu 02 Feb 2006 01:50:52 PM EST
Subject: [Tagdb] vertical search, strong typing amd multi-field queries

Slightly unrelated to tags/folksonomy but only slightly.

In my current consulting a recurring issue is that of search.
(A tag bundle can be used as a filter to reduce search scope and then we 
can do raw text or other searches.  But that is a separate topic .... )

I'd like to ask the list about the current dogma about providing a 
single search field with the belief that non-technical users find 
multiple fields too complicated and they will "leave" -  this belief is 
predominant in the major search engine companies.  There is also a UI 
dogma that simplicity is better and this dogma often dominates common 
sense approaches driven by the structure of underlying data.

See www.simplyhired.com for an example of a site that has moved away ( 
slightly ) from the single field dogma. 

I find the single query field appropriate for horizontal search engines 
like Google etc. where the query could be about anything.
But what if I am at a site that has say book information - does it make 
sense to provide a single field or does a set of fields 
title/author/publisher/....
make more sense?  When we have domain specialization for search i.e. 
vertical search, is it automatic that we also have strong typing of 
underlying data and hence multi-field search? Does a single field ( 
typeless query ) make sense for a vertical search engine.


Nitin Borwankar.