Firefox for Android has a UI Telemetry system. Here is an example of one of the ways we use it.
As you type a URL into Firefox for Android, matches from your browsing history are shown. We also display search suggestions from the default search provider. We also recently added support for displaying matches to previously entered search history. If any of these are tapped, with one exception, the term is used to load a search results page via the default search provider. If the term looks like a domain or URL, Firefox skips the search results page and loads the URL directly.
- This suggestion is not really a suggestion. It’s what you have typed. Tagged as
user. - This is a suggestion from the search engine. There can be several search suggestions returned and displayed. Tagged as
engine.# - This is a special search engine suggestion. It matches a domain, and if tapped, Firefox loads the URL directly. No search results page. Tagged as
url - This is a matching search term from your search history. There can be several search history suggestions returned and displayed. Tagged as
history.#
Since we only recently added the support for search history, we want to look at how it’s being used. Below is a filtered view of the URL suggestion section of our UI Telemetry dashboard. Looks like history.# is starting to get some usage, and following a similar trend to engine.# where the first suggestion returned is used more than the subsequent items.
Also worth pointing out that we do get a non-trivial amount of url situations. This should be expected. Most search keyword data released by Google show that navigational keywords are the most heavily used keywords.
An interesting observation is how often people use the user suggestion. Remember, this is not actually a suggestion. It’s what the person has already typed. Pressing “Enter” or “Go” would result in the same outcome. One theory for the high usage of that suggestion is it provides a clear outcome: Firefox will search for this term. Other ways of trigger the search might be more ambiguous.
