debvh - 6:42 pm on Jun 21, 2006 (gmt 0)

From the customer's perspective, I suggest that a quality result gives him/her the sought-after result, and it does so conveniently. Getting the wrong page on the right site may still be good enough for a given query, but it's not a quality result. An authority result, then, is one the customer expects to see. When someone searches for free e-mail, he/she probably does expect to see the offerings from Microsoft and our competitors, for example. These sites may not directly answer the customer's query, but the customer expects them and is surprised if they don't show up.

No fair, you asked us about quality and authority sites, not results. <Edit> I see now that this same point was made a couple of posts up.</edit>

From a customer perspective, I agree with your definition of a quality result.

I think your definition of authority is incomplete. As a searcher, I am always delighted to find a new authority on a topic, especially if the reason I am searching is that my old favorite authority isn't doing the job anymore.