Is Searching for Information Easy?

Give yourself a big ten and go to the head of the class if your site has a search engine that folks can type keywords into and search your site for relevant pages. You get partial credit if you've got a search engine, but you can only search part of the site.

This one is important, because we've found that when sites have a site-specific search engine, it's the favored way to navigate the site by better than two-thirds of the visitors. Some visitors only use the site-specific search engine.

There are a couple of ways to get this done. The folks who develop your page can go out and find some code that's a model for this. As an alternative, there's a site called "Atom Zä and others that will do the heavy lifting that goes with having a search engine on your site. Click here to evaluate a couple of them.

This is one where you can get some extra credit. There are two other things you can do to make your site easier to navigate.

You can put what are called "breadcrumbsä on your site. Breadcrumbs are those little sets of words across the top of the page that give you an idea where you stand in some kind of information hierarchy. Yahoo is one of the best sites there is at using them, so click there for an example.

You also get extra credit if you have a special "helpä page on your site. On my site it's called "Help finding things on this site.% The page is exactly what you would think. It includes a search engine for the site as well as a short, text-based site map to help people imagine where they want to go.

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