Experience Director. Product Guy. Sports Dork.
Bing is down and taking DuckDuckGo and ChatGPT with it.
Ran into DuckDuckGo issues this morning and I find it interesting that they they don’t mention Bing or Microsoft at all. I guess they’d rather accept the blame than remind people they don’t have their own search index?
I’ve been using DuckDuckGo on Mac and iOS for years at this point (primarily just to NOT use Google and give them literally all my life’s data) and generally for 90% searches it’s been fine and it’s easy to hop to Google when it’s not.
But… I accidentally searched for “tv” just now and the first result was TV Guide. Compare DDG to the Google results in my screenshots:
In what decade does a person searching for TV mean they want TV listings from TV Guide?
Maybe it’s time to relent and go back to Google or find a alternative to my Google alternative.
UX Magazine has a good overview that I found helpful of best practices for designing autosuggest experiences. Includes helpful examples and puts vocabulary around things like scoping, autocomplete vs autosuggest, and types of suggestions themselves.
Some scattershooting this week covering online marketing, social media branding, and the usability of advanced search. Read on to learn a little more about what I’ve been paying attention to recently.
eMarketer: Giving Affluents the Luxury Treatment Online
Luxury Daily: Why luxury automakers increasingly rely on iPad’s large canvas for engagement
A pair of articles on marketing to and serving affluent customers online covering web experience expectations, iPad apps, and luxury brands using (or not using) Twitter. Luxury brick and mortar stores offer intimacy and elegant product presentations and customers expect a comparable experience online. It is important that if you sell high end products or cater to a high end audience that your online presence creates an engaging experience as well.