Google, your website and usability

When people I meet find out what I do for a living (after I've convinced them it's a real job), I often find myself in a discussion about Google. It's a good aspiration to be as simple as Google but I often find those in charge of websites can miss the point.

"I'd love to have just a search field and nothing else on our home page" Really, why?

Google is a search engine. Its usability comes from prioritising its main purpose, search. This is the lesson you should take from Google. Prioritise the main purpose and don't let the lesser stuff get in the way.

Of course you can now get Google for your own website or intranet with Google Enterprise Search and Google Site Search. This can add usability benefits to your website through:

• Familiarity with the presentation of results pages
• Good search algorithm, spelling correction and whatnot

But it can also introduce a few issues as well. You see, when you get Google on your site or intranet its tempting to shout about it. In June 2006 the 4th most popular search term on a certain Blue Chip company's intranet search was 'World Cup'.

Why? Because the company had just bought Google Enterprise for a substantial amount of money. And now they wanted to shout about it. So in the place where the boring old unbranded search box used to be, there was suddenly a search box with a Google logo. Employees saw the Google logo and thought it was an internet search. No doubt they were slightly let down by the results.

People see the Google logo and assume it's a Google internet search. The same issue can arise on internet sites too. Since joining User Vision I've carried out usability testing on 3 websites that have used Google Site Search. In all of those studies at least one participant has said something like.

"I'll just do a search. Oh I don't want to use that [Google site search] because that's the internet. I just want to search this site."

Voila, all the benefits of using Google's algorithm, layout etc. etc. is denied to that person. Why? Because there is a Google logo on the search box. It says 'site search' too, but that doesn't matter because they didn't read it. They just looked at the logo.

You might be quite chuffed that you are using Google on your website but your site users are less concerned. They are not persuaded to use search because they see the logo.

I have never heard a test participant say "I'm not going to try to search because it's probably going to be rubbish". Well actually I have, but that's because they had used it before on an earlier task.

If you're using Google search on your website or intranet I suggest you ditch the logos if you can.