How come when I search for Chicago or Tucson or any other US city on Weather.com I don’t get a single pixel of weather data on the results screen?
I get links for ski forcasts. Links if I’m getting married. Links to traffic information. Links to city parks. Links to lawn & garden resources. But no temperature, no precipitation, no forecast.
If I search for a specific zip code I do get weather, but searching for a city name gives me just a list of matches (the first one is the one I want 99% of the time). Just show me the weather and give me the other links and matches as secondary options, not primary suggestions.
Who’s making decisions over there?
Anonymous Coward
on 14 Feb 07GOD YES. the fact that you have to search for a place, then click on the place name (“You searched for ‘Omaha, NE’ Are you looking for Omaha, NE, USA?”) then click on the 10 day forcast drives me INSANE. When planning my last road trip, I ended up using a different site simply because it was so frustrating having to click so many times to find out the weather on weather.com
Eddie
on 14 Feb 07I used to hate it when they would trick me with the text input boxes… Example: this one
...blame me the anxious user for not reading carefully, but when I type “weather.com” into my address bar, I’m immediately looking for a text box for my zip code… the “pet forcast” or Ski, or Park or whatever was always “center stage” and carrying the most visual weight and the actual weather search was blending in the header, so I would click there without reading too closely.
I seems this has been changed slightly these days.
Jase
on 14 Feb 07They’re messed up – use Google instead: http://www.google.com/search?q=chicago+weather
Nathan Clark
on 14 Feb 07There decision is all about page views – giving the weather on the results page cuts a page view, thus reducing their advertising clout and revenue. This way, users go to the root, then the search results, then the city page and possibly even a 4th for the 10-day forecast. 4 page views and associated revenues vs. 2 (or even if they had some asynchronous results). Bad user experience presently makes more advertising money in the short term. Just look at myspace…
Dean
on 14 Feb 07I gave up on weather.com long ago – try the NOAA site:
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/zones/PAZ070.php?zo=1
No ads or other distractions – just weather info!
MattH
on 14 Feb 07Weather.com is very frustrating. If you type “troy, mi”. It gives you two choices: Troy, MI and New Troy, MI. Why do I have to pick when I typed exactly what I wanted??
If you are looking for something simple . . .
http://www.weatherreports.com/chicago
Dan Boland
on 14 Feb 07That’s because weather.com sucks ass. And yet, I still use it.
Ken Norton
on 14 Feb 07Yahoo! Weather is broken too. Try this:
On weather.yahoo.com enter “94070” (the zip for “San Carlos, CA”).
Click “GO”
You see:
We found several matches for “94070” Select the one you want:
USA – San Carlos CA MX – Tenampa VER MXWTF? So it turns out there is a San Carlos Mexico, but you can be guaranteed it doesn’t have the zip code 94070. What could be a more precise indicator of user intent than a zipcode?
Then when I click “San Carlos, CA 94070” from my “Recent Locations” I get the weather for “San Carlos Centro Argentina.”
David Duran
on 14 Feb 07Re: Dean
Here Here! It’s amazes me that a site like Weather.com can exist when there are so many other better weather resources out there like NOAA.gov.
Not sure what they really offer besides an easy to remember domain name. Talk about bad signal to noise!
Mark
on 14 Feb 07You can get all that weather you’re looking for, but only after you click on the “weather in 1-click” link in the header.
Of course, to get your 1-link to weather, you have to give up your personal details and advertising preferences for their CRM types to add to their marketing database.
Marketing and monetization have their place in the world, but so many are so rotten at implementing it.
Mark
on 14 Feb 07Weather.com is a disaster; its hard to believe that they are still the most popular destination for getting forecasts. I pointed this out on my blog about a month ago and also discussed what a radically simpler weather site might look like. As David implied, most of the site’s value seems to derive from their domain name. Its only a matter of time before someone disrupts weather.com.
Mark
on 14 Feb 07Weather.com is a disaster; its hard to believe that they are still the most popular destination for getting forecasts. I pointed this out on my blog about a month ago and also discussed what a radically simpler weather site might look like. As David implied, most of the site’s value seems to derive from their domain name. Its only a matter of time before someone disrupts weather.com.
Dan
on 15 Feb 07I wonder if people that are searching with zip codes are locals and those searching by city name are more likely to be visiting. It’s either annoying that they do that or an interesting marketing strategy.
Jeremy
on 15 Feb 07I’m not sure who’s making the decisions, but until they get someone that knows what they’re doing…
http://www.wunderground.com/
Check out the mobile version too.
Mark
on 15 Feb 07Google and NOAA do a good job, but I still think Unisys is on top by far. I lose a little neighborhood specificity, but I can access the basics on a quick-loading page very easily. And if you poke around just a little bit you can find some really cool raw data.
Mark
on 15 Feb 07I’ve always thought that intellicast.com was a much better service than weather.com. The big plus is that their weather icons are nice, clean and easy to understand.
Accuweather.com does a really nice job in presenting the information as well.
Jeff
on 15 Feb 07I’ve been bitching about this for ages, and even sent them e-mail saying it was annoying. If I only get one result, just take me there!
One nice upgrade though… they do have an auto-complete for places you’ve already looked up.
Chris
on 15 Feb 07I can’t stand weather.com anymore – their weather pages are over 50% ads and I have to scroll to see a forecast. I enjoy http://www.wunderground.com/
Mike
on 15 Feb 07Weather.com drives me nuts too. I’m a big fan of http://www.forecastadvisor.com/.
Clint Pidlubny
on 15 Feb 07The decision-makers on this type of feature are likely so high up that they’re unaffected by weather and subsequently have never used their own site.
Anonymous
on 15 Feb 07Well said!
Dave
on 15 Feb 07Have to agree with Jeremy…
wunderground is a terrific weather site.
Carson
on 15 Feb 07TUCSON! That is where i am from…are you heading that way, or was that just a random city you mentioned?
vinnie
on 16 Feb 07That’s why I just use the default weather Dashboard widget instead. It’s not the most accurate for my area but it’s close enough to go by for getting dressed in the morning.
bryanl
on 16 Feb 07For another option, you could try weather.gov.
Jason Garber
on 17 Feb 07I’ve just memorized the url to weather for my area (zip):
http://www.weather.com/weather/local/22182
You get used to it after a while. Less hassle than searching!
Anonymous Coward
on 17 Feb 07Where did my post go? I was saying the BBC does great weather forecasts online….
North America
and on tv….
UK Forecast
(Far better than any US weather forecast I have ever seen)
This discussion is closed.