Byrne Tony Byrne

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Adding AJAX to faceted navigation

6-Oct-2006

Tags: Enterprise Search, Information Architecture,

WebSideStory is touting that its hosted search engine now supports AJAX-boosted resultsets. Specifically, you can mouse over clusters to invoke a filtered search, rather than clicking to refresh the page (see this example at Jockey.com). The bigger story here is not the cool Web 2.0 stuff, but rather, the prevalence of guided navigation capabilities at the lower end of the search marketplace, a trend we identified in the latest edition of the Enterprise Search Report. That's good for you the customer, but just remember that guided (or "faceted") navigation relies on solid metadata, which is why catalog companies have been among the more successful early adopters. No metadata, no clusters; no clusters, no spiffy AJAX flyovers.

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