Google’s accessible search

Geschreven door Joop op July 21, 2006

Google Labs Logo

Google Labs introduced a certain kind of search yesterday. From their weblog:

Accessible Search adds a small twist to the familiar Google search: In addition to finding the most relevant results as measured by Google’s search algorithms, it further sorts results based on the simplicity of their page layouts. (Simplicity, of course, is subjective in this context.) When users search from the http://labs.google.com/accessible site, they’ll receive results that are prioritized based on their usability.

http://labs.google.com/accessible/

I tried it and did a search for my own name. In a standard Google search of my name this weblog is the first result, which is good. But even though this weblog uses webstandards it doesn’t come up as first in Google’s accessible search. First in the accessible search is my “Share Your OPML” page. Weird.

Update: After writing this peace the order has been shifted. Now the URI of this weblog comes up first in the list of results.

The idea to show result ordered on accessibilty I support strongly. If the ‘normal’ Google would behave more like this, webmasters are encouraged to make websites accessible. Accessible for anyone and any device. That’s the whole idea of webstandards, right?

  1. Abby Manishor Fri, 21 Jul 2006 16:16:57 CEST

    It’s important to help spread the word about this new tool, since it is a step forward. For more information about Google’s Accessible Search, check out http://www.afb.org/blog.