Some thoughts on search

I was reading Christina Wodtke's interview with Amanda Spink on boxesandarrows.com and it is quite interesting information on search behavior and how much it has changed (or not changed) over the years. Couple of points that seem to stand out from the interview include:

• People still used short search terms
• Results beyond the first few pages are hardly referred to
• People haven't explored enough with large (not long) text boxes, so there is not data on how users perceive them
• Users are better at describing their information needs to people than to search engines

The article also led to a PARC event where Peter Norvig gave a talk on Web Search as a Product of and Catalyst for AI. Haven't seen that yet, but plan to do so soon.