Information Research Weblog

Reviewing my own use of the Web some time ago, I came to the conclusion that I use it mainly as a question-answering system: What is the definition of...? Where can I buy...? Where is there a decent restaurant in...? To some extent, who puts up the information is not so important as long as I recognize that it is a fairly authoritative source - in general, I wouldn't use personal pages for answers to these kinds of questions. Except, perhaps, in relation to technology, when discussion lists often contain very useful information from people who've tried something out and are prepared to tell you why it doesn't work.

Now Jakob Nielsen has come to something like the same conclusion. His latest Alertbox column points out that people are using the Web to find answers to their questions and that the implications for e-commerce sites in particular are significant. How do you turn the casual enquirer into a loyal customer? Well, in my case you don't: I shop around for everything, and just because I got a good price for something doesn't mean that I'll go back to the same place for something similar. Time moves on, and prices move with it!

Leaving e-commerce aside, however, it's interesting to speculate about the shape the Web is taking in people's minds as they use it as a combined dictionary, encyclopedia, technical manual, cookery book, or whatever. Nielsen's point is that the Web is becoming this question-answering system by virtue of the existence of the search engines. It is not essential these days to keep a list of sites visited - Bookmarks or Favourites - if you found the page before, you'll find it again, through Google, Alta Vista, or AlltheWeb - or whatever is your favourite of the moment.

It's also dangerous, of course; particularly if you are prepared to accept the first thing you find that appears to answer your question. It seems likely that users will become less and less careful about what they decide to accept as authoritative, simply because things are being found so quickly. The bigger the Web grows, the more difficult it becomes to do more than check out the first four or five items in the output list - as long as those first items appear to provide the answer.

So, do the search engines have an increasing responsibility to validate the accuracy of what they present to the user?