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Everything about Findability

Ease of finding information on a website

Findability is the ease with which information contained on a website can be found, both from outside the website and by users already on the website. Although findability has relevance outside the World Wide Web, the term is usually used in that context. Most relevant websites do not come up in the top results because designers and engineers do not cater to the way ranking algorithms work currently. Its importance can be determined from the first law of e-commerce, which states "If the user can't find the product, the user can't buy the product." As of December 2014, out of 10.3 billion monthly Google searches by Internet users in the United States, an estimated 78% are made to research products and services online. Wikipedia →

🧭 Start here: a 6-step reading path

  1. Read the overview: FindabilityA 5-minute orientation
  2. Skim a recent paper: Developing a standardized but extendable framework to increase the findability of infectious disease datasetsInfluential work since 2022
  3. Pick up a classic book: Zusammenfassung über Bauwerke und den Einfachsten Dingen des Lebens, teilweise mit und in der SchriftThe most-reprinted book on the subject
  4. Read the landmark paper: PDBe: improved findability of macromolecular structure data in the PDBCited 77 times
  5. Go sideways: SpamdexingA closely related topic
  6. Go sideways: Search engine results pageA closely related topic

📖 Definitions

Noun The ability to be found.

Noun The quality of a particular object being locatable.

Noun The quality of a whole system being navigable.

🗂️ The subject at a glance

  1. Introduction
  2. History
  3. External findability
  4. On-site findability
  5. Evaluation and measures
  6. Beyond findability

🏆 Landmark papers (most cited)

🆕 Influential since 2022

📚 Books worth reading

Ranked by number of editions on Open Library, a rough measure of how lasting a book is.

🔗 Related topics