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We watched students use search: both in-site and google Google search.
- They had no problems with
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- Google, usually checking the first or first few results.
- For in-site searching, we saw them look for something general (eg. "postgrad") and something specific (XXX courses). When they made
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- general searches, they got lots of results from across the homesite (usually at the top) and
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- a high number of Faculty and School sites. Usually they paused at the top result but then saw the F&S results below and felt they had to read them. This really slowed them down, especially when their faculty or school wasn't represented - they'd read the list more than once to be sure they weren't missing a 'more direct' result, before selecting the top answer.
One student who got a result with shaded 'recommended links' ignored those results. When asked what she thought those results might be, she couldn't say - but did ignore them (as you might ignore sponsored results on Google).