Findability

Findability is the ease with which information contained on a website can be found, both from outside the website (using search engines and the like) and by users already on the website. Although findability has relevance outside the World Wide Web, the term is usually used in that context. Most relevant websites do not come up in the top results because designers and engineers do not cater to the way ranking algorithms work currently. Its importance can be determined from the first law of e-commerce, which states 'If the user can’t find the product, the user can’t buy the product.' As of December 2014, out of 10.3 billion monthly Google searches by Internet users in the United States, an estimated 78% are made to research products and services online. Findability is the ease with which information contained on a website can be found, both from outside the website (using search engines and the like) and by users already on the website. Although findability has relevance outside the World Wide Web, the term is usually used in that context. Most relevant websites do not come up in the top results because designers and engineers do not cater to the way ranking algorithms work currently. Its importance can be determined from the first law of e-commerce, which states 'If the user can’t find the product, the user can’t buy the product.' As of December 2014, out of 10.3 billion monthly Google searches by Internet users in the United States, an estimated 78% are made to research products and services online. Findability encompasses aspects of information architecture, user interface design, accessibility and search engine optimization (SEO), among others. Findability is similar to discoverability, which is defined as the ability of something, especially a piece of content or information, to be found. It is different from web search in that the word find refers to locating something in a known space while 'search' is in an unknown space or not in an expected location. Mark Baker, the author of Every Page is Page One, mentions that findability 'is a content problem, not a search problem'. Even when the right content is present, users often find themselves deep within the content of a website but not in the right place. He further adds that findability is intractable, perfect findability is unattainable, but we need to focus on reducing the effort for finding that a user would have to do for themselves.