Effective Site & Intranet Search: 7 Essential ElementsNot all site and intranet search is created equal. When considering different search engines, there are some essential elements you should be looking for, both to make life easier for your end-users and yourself. Relevance that’s Both High Out-of-the-Box and Tunable to Your Content and Users’ NeedsSearch engines should deliver high relevance right out of the box, regardless of how many documents are being searched or what their topics are. However, websites and intranets with more complex or technical content usually benefit from some tuning to more narrowly focus results lists. Similarly, different users may require different features to be turned on or off. Make sure the administration interfaces for your search engine make this as easy as possible. Access to All of Your Corporate Content Repositories and File FormatsWeb search engines have it easy. The content they search is typically HTML pages or PDF files sitting on a Web server. Intranet search must access pages on Web servers, documents in file systems, records in databases, content management systems and so on. This requires sophisticated gateways to all of these repositories and applications in order to access the content within them while still respecting their security models. It also requires the ability to filter the content and other information out of the file formats you use everyday: Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel; Adobe PDF; graphics formats like GIF and JPEG—in total, nearly 300 file formats are found on many companies’ servers. Rapid ImplementationImplementing search on a website or intranet should be quick and easy. Ideally, you should be able to download it and have it up and running in less an hour so you can try it out. No ordering, no waiting for a box to be delivered, no deciphering the user manual. That way, if you like what you see, you can simply move to the next essential element. While a lot of complex things go on in the background of your site and/or intranet search—relevancy ranking, accessing and indexing the content in enterprise applications, enforcing security protocols—what happens in the foreground should be an exercise in simplicity. Most organizations these days don’t have the resources to spend much time tinkering with search settings. When you look at different search engines, ask yourself:
The Ability to Grow Along with Your BusinessThe number of documents you have that need to be searched probably isn’t the number of documents you’ll have in a year or even in six months. The number of documents in the average enterprise doubles between every six and 18 months. The growth rate on public websites tends to be slower, but still must be considered. When it comes to handling this growth, you have to consider two things:
Analytic Capabilities that Tell You How People are Using Your SearchUnderstanding how people are using your search, what they’re looking for, and then making improvements proactively is always better than having angry users complain that they can’t find anything. Make sure your search engine delivers the analytics and reporting capabilities you need to ensure you’re providing your users with the most rewarding experience possible. True Enterprise-class Design, Not Web Search Tweaked for Corporate EnvironmentsMost Web search engines these days rely on the Internet’s rich linking structure to help determine whether a page is relevant to a particular query. In essence, the more links to a page from other pages and websites, the more relevant the creators of those websites think that page is. In the enterprise, this rich linking doesn’t exist. How many links are there between word processing documents, PDF files and spreadsheets on your intranet? Between pages on your website? In most corporate environments there aren’t any, or are very few. Look for a search engine that was designed, tested and have been proven through extensive implementation in the real world to determine relevancy without relying on this type of linking. |
UltraseekElements of Effective Site & Intranet Search Business Search vs. Consumer Search (PDF - Requires Registration) How to Choose the Right Search Engine for Your Business (PDF Whitepaper - Requires Registration) Ultraseek OptionsResources |
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