Fuzzy Search: Corporate Use

August 7, 2007

Yell: fuzzy search

You will have noticed that Google asks whether you really meant to search for “Your Search Term”, and suggests that perhaps you meant “A Different Search Term” instead. This is, of course, because people get the spelling wrong, or only know part of the term they are looking for. And, of course, different companies can use different terminology for the same thing.

People searching on your corporate site are just as likely to get things wrong as people using Google. Perhaps they search for ‘jobs’, when everything on your site is called ‘job openings’, or for ‘AGM’ when you’ve called these annual events ‘Shareholder Meetings’, and then leave, frustrated, when they don’t find what they want.

This fuzzy search option at Yell is an interesting solution to the problem of visitors not knowing what to search for. It is the only place I have spotted a fuzzy search on a corporate site.

If you’ve seen any others, do please let me know.

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This post was written by Lucy.

Lucy

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One Response to “Fuzzy Search: Corporate Use”

  1. Retail, redesign and lost visitors | Corporate Eye on November 21st, 2008 2:58 pm

    [...] the search functionality – does that search everything on the site? Can it handle mis-spellings, synonyms and partial phrases? Do the results offer suggestions for what might have been meant? [...]

     

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