Effect of Web Search Engine Design on User Performance and Preference

The research objective was to gather empirical data about the effects of a Web search engine’s user interface on user performance and preference. Twelve participants performed the same two tasks on all four search engines: Alta Vista, Excite, Infoseek/Go, and MSN. For each task, the following measures were collected: task time, task completion status, and task rating. For each search engine, the following measures were collected: overall ratings, likes, dislikes, preference ranking, and ranking reason. Overall, the findings indicate that the participants had difficulty completing the two tasks with all search engines. The quantitative and qualitative test measures indicate that the participants evaluated the Alta Vista and MSN search engines more favorably than the Excite and InfoSeek search engines. An H Test of the preference ranks revealed that Alta Vista was the most preferred search engine