on Jacob Nielsen:

usability studies show that more than half of all users are search-dominant, about a fifth of the users are link-dominant, and the rest exhibit mixed behavior

There are many things I like about Epicurious.com, ranging from the delicious recipes to the impressive UI. I’m still working on identifying all the interesting features I think work well, but here are a few.

1. They split their search paradigm into a simple keyword search, advanced search, and browse. All three of these are easy to use and straightforward.

2. The results page is elegant, yet offers a lot of information and tools.

3. Even though they could offer a ton of options to refine with, their left nav only shows one set of sort options, one set of filters, and a “search within results” keyword box. Advanced search is promoted, but not very visibly.

4. The listing display is easy to scan and informative. I like the little icons that communicate different attributes of a recipe such as “healthy”, “quick and easy”, “wine pairing”, etc.

There’s more to like, but this is all for today.

Microsoft Research is working on faceted search for cell phones.

Peter Morville posted some good screenshots of Taptu, a mobile social search app that seems pretty well designed. They even have a whitepaper on this stuff, but I haven’t read it yet.

kayak

trulia

The ask.com search result page is split into two “frames”. The main content container (search results) scrolls, but the left navbar and top tabs stay constant. I haven’t come across this feature anywhere else, and I wonder how important it is to the user, but it’s an interesting idea. It is useful if you really want your users to use your navigation after they have reviewed a bunch of results.

In general, the ask.com results page feels very clean and concise.

Snooth has a “Pssst…. wanna see some samples?” link right underneath the search box:

When you click on it, it shows suggestions that you can scroll through:

- Interesting display of individual listings — condensed, succinct.

- You can switch to “descriptive” listing style (I like the wording of “compact” vs “descriptive”).

The guardian.co.uk has a smooth and clean search interface. Their search is powered by endeca.