Findability

Findability is a term for the ease with which information contained on a website can be found, both from outside the website (using search engines and the like) and by users already on the website. Although findability has relevance outside the World Wide Web, it is usually used in the context of the web. The popularization of the term "findability" for the Web is usually credited to Peter Morville. In 2005 he defined as: "the ability of users to identify an appropriate Web site and navigate the pages of the site to discover and retrieve relevant information resources", though it appears to have been first coined in a public context referring to the web and information retrieval by Alkis Papadopoullos in an article entitled "Findability": The Key to Enterprise Search. By Papadopoullos, Alkis Publication: KM World Date: Friday, April 1 2005.

Findability encompasses aspects of information architecture, user interface design, accessibility and search engine optimization (SEO), among others.

Findability can be evaluated via usability testing or tree testing.

See also

• Annotation
• Information retrieval
• Knowledge mining
• Knowledge representation
• Semantic web
• Subject (documents)
• Usability
• User interface
• Web indexing

References

• Jacob, Elin K. and Loehrlein, Aaron (Indiana University, Bloomington, USA). Information architecture. In: Annual Review of Information Science and Technology (ARIST), vol 43(2009). Medford, N.J.: Information Today, Inc.
• Morville, P. (2005) Ambient findability. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly
• Wurman, R.S. (1996). Information architects. New York: Graphis.

External links

• findability.org: a collection of links to people, software, organizations, and content related to findability
• The age of findability (article)
• Use Old Words When Writing for Findability (article on the findability impact of a site's choice of words)
• Ambient Findability (book)
• Building Findable Websites: Web Standards SEO and Beyond (book)
• The Findability Formula: The Easy, Non-Technical Guide to Search Engine Marketing by Heather Lutze