If Google intentionally slowed its search results by 10%, would people not spend more time on the site? Perhaps even to the tune of 10%? But would people suddenly love Google 10% more?
As a more explicit example, Facebook used to allow you to type a friend's name into the search bar on desktop, and a card would come down (with other possible people too you could select/down-arrow to) so when you hit enter you would go straight to that friend's page. Now, all search queries take you to a search page, where you can then click on your friend's name. That extra page load and click multiplied a few times a day probably keeps me on Facebook an extra minute or so every day, which I'm sure was used during the feature testing to justify its greatness. Instead, it noticeably and nearly daily negatively impacts my life.
> Impact of Response Latency on User Behavior in Web Search
> Query response latency. :
> In [18], the authors exposed
a commercial search engine’s users
to response time delays of varying magnitude
and observed the impact of different levels of delay
on users’ long-term search behavior.
They observed that the users
who were exposed to higher time delays
issued fewer queries than they usually do.
Interestingly, the effects were shown to be persistent
in the long-term even after the response latency
had returned to the original levels.
I think that to increase user time on their website,
search providers do well to try and improve
search result latency.
Thanks, in the back of my mind I thought this might not be the best example, as I vaguely remembered reading a similar study from Facebook where slowing their users pages down resulted in less time spent on the site. I think the second example holds more clearly, though, and the general point that keeping users on your site longer doesn't mean you're actually adding additional value to their life.
I'm convinced that Facebook's algorithmic newsfeed is deliberately filled with things they know I'm not interested in because the time it takes me to scroll past them increases "engagement".
As a more explicit example, Facebook used to allow you to type a friend's name into the search bar on desktop, and a card would come down (with other possible people too you could select/down-arrow to) so when you hit enter you would go straight to that friend's page. Now, all search queries take you to a search page, where you can then click on your friend's name. That extra page load and click multiplied a few times a day probably keeps me on Facebook an extra minute or so every day, which I'm sure was used during the feature testing to justify its greatness. Instead, it noticeably and nearly daily negatively impacts my life.