Technorati changes its colours

Thoughts on Technorati's new look and feel.

Technorati, the blog search engine changed its look and feel on the occasion of its third birthday on 24th July.

a. Technorati's new look marginalizes the search box and makes searching difficult instead of the opposite.

b. Technorati is a blog search engine and it searches blogs, so why the influx of ads before the search results itself and too much content on the search results page that takes attention away from what shows up in the search results.

c. The Web page requires horizontal scrolling on an 800 by 600 screen resolution.

d. Why do they want the users to select from blog posts, tags, or blog directory for their search keywords. Isn't it a blog search engine that is supposed to tell us what information exists for those keywords, instead of asking the user to actually select specific content.

e. They need to do away with the dropdown box and give the tags and blog directory as plain text links. That would make searching easier. Go to the search box, type what you're looking for, and viola you get it. Keep it simple.

f. Keep a search box and let the user search without asking for blogs or tags or directory. That's a point that has also been mentioned in Steve Krug's 'Don't make me think' book on Usability.

g. Too many ads spoil the appearance of the search results page. What's that 'insurance-related' image ad doing side-by-side with the top three search results?

h. The 'Ping Technorati' link is relegated to the bottom left-hand side of the Web page, and the bottom of the page shows more sponsored text ads.

Pros:
- It's an attempt to gather more content on a single page and engage the user to experiment with various features listed under special headings.

Cons:
- Usability needs improvement. The dropdown isn't required for search.
- Search box needs to be made more prominent
- Too many text ads
- Image ad isn't required
- Too many colours on a page. Green, blue, and pink headings
- Keep the headings green or any other colour. Don't keep them as green, blue, pink, and orange all on one page.
- Requires horizontal scroll on 800 by 600 resolution
- Technorati Tools should be on the top right-hand side of the page