Navigating the Web Better on Ask

Back in December 2008, we started beta-testing our Domain Navigation product, and measurements showed that our searchers found it useful and enhanced their overall search experience.

Why is this helpful? Domain Navigation (a.k.a., ‘Domain Nav’ or site links) is the block of up to eight navigational links that may appear below the top organic result, depending on the query. The idea, on the surface, is simple: get the user one-click closer to their intended destination.

Estimates show that 11% to 25% of all search engine traffic is navigational in nature (Rose, Levinson, WWW 2004, Jansen, et. al., WWW 2007, Teevan, et. al., SIGIR 2007, Slawski, SEO By The Sea, March 13, 2008). Very loosely put, it’s about using the search engine to find and go to a known destination. 

This is what Domain Nav looks like, below, for a user who has simply typed in the term “Amtrak” into the main search box:

But more often than not, the navigational result is merely a stop-over to further navigation to their ultimate destination. In the example above, access to some type of travel specifics, logistics, or timetable information is likely to be more useful than the general, generic content on the front-page. 

A great example might be an entertainment site, like Disney:

... or a site like Food Network:

This is an interesting (and important) product for many reasons beyond just getting the user one-click closer to their desired destination. Navigational links lend themselves to terse descriptions and are easily grasped by users when displayed in a tabular format. Furthermore they are filtered down to the most popular or most useful links on a particular site. This is very handy for cluttered sites that are difficult to navigate. 

From the search engine’s point of view, it is an opportunity to display a dense yet highly readable block of links which are closely related to the top result. The navigational block typically occupies one result slot. Now, in the space of two result slots which previously showed two links, we can now show as many as nine links. This greatly increases the probability of satisfying the user and speeding up the distance between the searcher and the right Answer.

An e-commerce site like Barnes & Noble is another good example, because most of the time we go to it knowing exactly the area we want to peruse off the home page – with Domain Nav, we take one (often time-consuming) step out of the user process:

Speaking of probabilities: organic ranking will frequently have some type of diversity goal among its objectives.  But when there is high confidence in the top result, it is useful to show other popular links from the same domain. This is essentially a type of ‘domain-locality’ which runs counter to the diversity objective.  Domain collapsing -- the indented results from the same domain as the un-indented result -- tries to capture this to some extent, but Domain Nav goes much further by displaying more links, all while using much fewer of those precious pixels on the SERP.

And then there is the trust issue – not to be underestimated in its importance to us at Ask. The Domain Nav process at Ask serves up links that users can trust, helping to protect from the darker side of the web. As we all know, one slip of the finger could land a web user in dangerous territory. When the cost of error is, say, a depleted bank account, users should give serious consideration to how they navigate to their online banking site. Typosquatters and phishing scams are out there trying to steal users’ identities, but search engines are a primary force in keeping them in check:

The Ask Domain Nav product has been rolling out in phases, both in terms of technology and in quantity of coverage. Just this past week, we greatly expanded this product’s coverage and many more improvements are already underway. We hope this product helps make your experience on Ask.com a bit more…answered.

Thanks for reading, and have fun navigating the web…on Ask!

Ben Kao
Senior Software Engineer, Ask.com