I've had this nagging *feeling* for quite some time that much web development time is wasted in designing and developing search boxes that are never used beyond the developers and testers.

![a mockup of a standard webpage layout][1]

With browsers implementing search bars themselves, I rarely use web-page level search boxes, with the exceptions of search engines and online stores. For blogs and informational websites, I often don't trust the built-in search to return better results than I'd get from Google.

# Is there any research to suggest that it's important to implement a search feature internally within a website?

## What are the usability trade-offs if it's left out?

[1]: https://i.sstatic.net/AO615.png