Google Search Appliance Creating the Search Experience - Manual (Page 111)

Google Search Appliance: Creating the Search Experience Customizing the User Interface 111
Make Help Easily Available
A link to a help page should be accessible near the search box.
Make Search Results Pages Useful
Search results pages should have all the information that a user needs to determine whether a given
search result meets her information needs. Within a search results page, the following information
about the results should appear:
• The original query within a search box
• Number of results for the query
• Total number of results
• Current retrieval set (for example, 21-30 of N, where N = total number of results)
• Time it took for the results to be returned
• State the query searched for and what collection was searched
• Title of a result document
• Dynamically generated document snippet
• URL of the result document
• Size of the result document
Also, the search appliance provides additional cached page features that may be provided with the
results. Cache results allow the user to see the HTML version of the original page. This feature is
especially useful if the URL is currently unavailable or in a format that the user's computer cannot read.
Keep the Number of Results Reasonable
Calculating and displaying lots of results is computing-intensive. Because most users find what they are
looking for in the first 10 results, it is recommended that each search results page show only 10 results.
You can always give the users an advanced search option to change the number of search results that
appear on each search results page.