If you don't update your site regularly, your indexing by SE will be affected in a significant way. Google adjusts the frequency of the spider's visits based on the times you publish new contents on your site. This blog has been affected by a fluctuation in its update frequency and Google did react accordingly. Before the fluctuation, Google indexed my site contents as soon as a new post was published. Currently, it indexes my contents only after 24/32 hours. I don't know if there was also a reassessment by the end of the month that also affected the indexing routine, but I know for sure that now such indexing shows significant delays.

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That hurts. I've tried to type "fbml html validation" in Yahoo and Bing to check whether these search engines correctly index Blogspot's sites... nada, zippo, nichts. Generally, when you type these keywords on Google you get one of my posts among search results. This is not a surprise, of course. I think that some kind of war is currently going on. Probably this is due to the existing differences between the various search algorithms or perhaps to a little revenge against Google. That is, why Yahoo and Bing should pay attention to Blogspot given that this platform is run by Google? However, that's a pity.

Jakob Nielsen summarized his opinions in his article:

Overly literal search engines reduce usability in that they're unable to handle typos, plurals, hyphens, and other variants of the query terms. Such search engines are particularly difficult for elderly users, but they hurt everybody. A related problem is when search engines prioritize results purely on the basis of how many query terms they contain, rather than on each document's importance. Much better if your search engine calls out "best bets" at the top of the list -- especially for important queries, such as the names of your products. Search is the user's lifeline when navigation fails. Even though advanced search can sometimes help, simple search usually works best, and search should be presented as a simple box, since that's what users are looking for.

I have to say that I fully agree with him. Simply put, a bad search engine can actually affect the user experience on a given website, because the results it might produce can make the user feel frustrated and disappointed. But what is a good search engine? A good search engine is something that:

• tries to correct typos and query variants, providing the correct results to a given query
• avoids the disappointing "no results found" page, as Amazon does
• suggests search queries during typing (with Ajax, for example)
• orders results in a relevance scale, so that a user can immediately jump to the most pertinent result
• provides some advanced search features to refine search results.

A search engine that fulfills these goals is already a good search engine, provided that it leaves room for further improvements. Flexibility is always the most required feature.

Interesting video! There are some good insights in this presentation.