Paging through search results is part of life on the web. The best ones give perspective. Where am I?
Two types of perspective
- Global perspective: where am I in the entire search results?
- Local perspective: what results am I near?
I looked at four sites that I use often and have paged search results. There is a lot more to search than paging between results, so there are other ways to show perspective. For now, I’m going to focus on navigating around results.
Looking at the first list, it appears there are seven pages of results. I go to the seventh page and learn there are at least three more pages. This will happen again if I click the tenth page, and continue on and on.
While Technorati gives me a good idea of where I am locally, my vision forward is obstructed. On the other hand, their global view backward is pretty good, making it easy to take me to the first result.
This is very similar to the Technorati results, but Flickr has changed a couple things. The addition of the ellipsis after the seventh page warns me that there are more than seven pages. An ellipsis is also added to the left side of the list when I get to the tenth result.
Flickr makes me very aware of where I am locally, but sends me for my calculator globally. 32,120 results at 24 per page means… 1,339 pages?
Easily the worst of this group. When I get to the tenth page, I have to click the next link to roll over into the second set of ten pages. Yahoo! Real Estate gives me no local perspective, nor much global perspective beyond the total listings.
Finally, the best of the lot. On the first page of results, I can access the final page. When I’m somewhere in the middle, I had ready access to the three adjacent pages in either direction. Realtor.com has good local perspective, and globally, I can always navigate to the first or last page.
These are four different result sets, which are searches with very different purposes. The paging mechanism can be generalized to a long, ranked list. Providing some perspective of where we are locally and globally can communicate the list’s organization and make a little more sense of a search.
I’m looking for other examples, and your thoughts. Is this sort of perspective important? Who does it well?
Nice exposition, Adam. I also like the last one. The trick is to provide something meaningful without overwhelming the user.
I’ll bet the next button doesn’t stay in the same place (i.e. I can’t keep clicking next without moving my cursor), unless I’m in the middle of the data.
I wonder which of these four tested their designs with users?!
Glad you liked it.
That’s a good point about staying in the same place. All of these move, which might be the nature of going from single to two-digit numbers, but that is fixable with a little styling (assuming you know the maximum number of pages you’ll have).
More importantly, though, all but the Yahoo! Real Estate examples occur at the bottom of the page. So, not only will the next button move, but the first thing you’ll see when you click is the top of the page you clicked on.
If the paging was at the top, and the next button didn’t move, it would help the people who want to quickly page through.