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In a typical organization, search projects are often treated as solely a matter of technology. Perpetuating this tunnel vision is the preponderance of commentary that concentrates on comparing the features of various search software alternatives. Such a narrow view prevents organizations from delivering relevant and accurate information to knowledge workers, despite the fact that these organizations spend a lot of money acquiring the latest search software.

To empower knowledge workers and fully realize the value of search software, organizations need to do more than just point software at existing corporate repositories. The chasm of empty content repositories needs to be crossed. The information that users are seeking must first be present in the repositories before search software can work its magic.

Reasons for why the content repositories are stale can be many: There may not be a defined process in place to update the repositories. Or there could be no incentive to update them.Worse still, there could be a vested interest in information hoarding.

You need a holistic approach encompassing technology, people, process, and culture to extract the maximum value from your investments in search technology.

At its core, the essence of search is matching user-expressed desire for information with content that holds that information. Today's search software is very powerful; using advanced algorithms and a variety of techniques, it accomplishes the first part (figuring out user intent) reasonably well. However, through no fault of its own, search software is helpless in addressing the equally (if not more) important aspect of matching intent with existing content. Search software can find a needle in a haystack, but it cannot mine for gold in garbage. If the corporate repositories are empty, outdated, and lacking relevant content, what's search software to do? Let's dig a little deeper…

Here is a common scenario: Employees complain that they cannot find information they are looking for on their intranet, which is usually the gateway to various corporate repositories. Management recognizes that not having the required information adversely affects employee productivity and so decides to install new search software to get around the problem. The latest and greatest options available are assessed, a choice is made, and the software is implemented.

But that doesn't always solve the problem, because employees, especially new users, don't always know where to look. Thus, thorough training is required. As their familiarity with the application increases, users learn various tricks and shortcuts as a way to cope.

Or perhaps you don't find what you are looking for—even though it is right out there—because it is called by a name different from the one you expect, or it is placed in a different category. Appropriate labeling and meaningful naming for categories will solve some of these issues. The search software provides a lot of features to help in this respect: thesauri, synonyms, classification, related terms, etc. Looking in the application logs reveals what users are searching for, and this method is a very effective way to tweak the system to more closely reflect user expectations.

User training and usability improvements can also help alleviate the above two problems . . .

But more often than not, the reason you do not find what you are looking for is that it's simply not there. That brings us back to building a culture of information sharing. As was mentioned earlier, to ensure that you extract value from your search investments, a multipronged approach involving technology, process, people, and culture is required.

Technology: Start by figuring out the informational needs of the different categories of users in the organization, not just for today but for the future as well. Then select the search technology that meets your requirements. Much has been written about how to go about making this choice.

Process: An effective process should make it easy to contribute content to repositories and also to provide feedback on or rate that content. It should also define content expiration policies and monitoring mechanisms. Depending on your particular situation, you may want either to have full-time librarians sifting through content or to enlist volunteers to ensure content accuracy, freshness, and usefulness by meta-tagging, indexing, summarizing, etc.

People and Organizational Culture: Removing the process roadblocks takes care of those who want to contribute but were holding back because it was too tedious to do so. But you still have to address the information-hoarding issue. There are no easy solutions here—you cannot simply buy your way to a highly collaborative, high-performance workplace.

Useful content can be the spark for someone's intelligence, but all too often there is little motivation for contributors to share their knowledge. Employees should be encouraged to actively contribute, and regular contributions should be at least recognized, if not rewarded. Creating communities of practice and identifying a champion responsible for a particular area helps. These strategies may need to be supplemented by a new management process that involves both training and an effort to spread awareness through (marketing) promotions. Blogs, wikis, and newsletters can help accomplish the goal of promoting a culture of collaboration.

Remember, for a successful search initiative,

• document repositories, content management systems, etc. should all work in tandem.
• content repositories must be fresh and relevant.
• along with IT, business and organizational change experts need to be part of the solution.

Download a free PDF of this article.

KASHYAP KOMPELLA heads the "Usability and Design Practice" at Wipro Technologies. Email Kashyap at kashyap.kompella@wipro.com.

From Robert Berkman's Intelligent Agent blog (Oct.25, 2006)

Now that Google has released its customized search engine (read about it here), there are all sorts of opportunities for anyone to easily create their own niche search engine covering only their most trusted, substantive sites. (Google isn't the first to do this: a neat one called Rollyo has been around for a little while--it's only problem: it's not Google. Not that it's not good, it just isn't going to get the attention or traction. And most of us do like the Google search interface and protocols.)

So, do you follow, for example the pet care industry and have 20 favorite sites? You can create a simple fast customized Google search engine that only searches those sites.

This is only limited by your imagination. This can be a great tool for:

1. Making your searches more precise
2. Helping overcome information overload
3. Setting a filter to find those sources you find trusted and credible.

I've already begun working on an all purpose Business Research Engine. I've only just begun with 11 sites, but would like to end up at about 100 . . .

***

Check out Bob's "Business Research Engine" (still in progress), here.  While at this link, you can also sign up and start creating a custom engine of your own.

Exalead has unveiled new versions of its search software for desktop and workgroup environments--exalead one:desktop 4.5 and exalead one:workgroup 4.5. Especially noteworthy, says Exalead, is the desktop product's unlimited document indexing, which is also a feature in the workgroup offering. (Exalead will continue to offer a free downloadable version of its exalead one:desktop software product that can index up to 100,000 documents.) The company explains that as a standalone product, the desktop version offers unified access to information located on a hard drive, in applications such as e-mail or on the Web. When integrated with exalead one:workgroup, the two products serve as a secure solution for a small business or a department within a larger organization, says Exalead. According to the company, new features in Version 4.5 of each offering include:

• infinite scalability,
• faster query response,
• optimize search speed performance on any PC,
• expanded e-mail client support,
• support for more than 300 file formats,
• rich document preview, and
• optimized support for multicore and multiprocessor PCs.

LexisNexis' Risk & Information Analytics Group has announced Version 2.0 of its Relavint Desktop visual link analysis solution. Relavint Desktop is designed to enable users to easily uncover linkages between suspects and their associated addresses, assets and accomplices.

Relavint Desktop 2.0's drawing and editing capabilities can be extended to enable customers to directly search and access live data from the company's Accurint law enforcement offering. Further, says LexisNexis, through its Expert Services, the flexible and extensible software is configurable to automatically incorporate, display and link customers' internal data sets along with external reference data from the LexisNexis catalog of information. Version 2.0 also enables users to seamlessly integrate Relavint link charts and their associated data with other third-party link analysis tools, adds LexisNexis.

Centric Software, a provider of Product Intelligence solutions for the enterprise, has announced the global availability of Centric InSight 6.0, an intelligent search application that discovers and classifies all structured and unstructured product information stored behind the firewall in disparate, enterprise-wide systems. Centric InSight enables access to product documents, technical drawings, bills of material, ERP records, and other content.

Centric InSight discovers and classifies results based on common product attributes from multiple systems, such as CAD, PLM, PDM, and ERP systems, as well as office documents, PDFs, and email files. Its features include comparisons of results, multiple options to manage results as-needed, and respect for established network and data security restrictions that protect document sources, only allowing access based on roles. Additionally the application enables access to technical drawings and manuals to control the costs and schedules of construction projects.

Additional product intelligence built into Centric InSight 6.0 recognizes duplicate results, categorizes results against data types, and gives users options to navigate through un-indexed document relationships. To manage results, users can select to share documents or organize them in a project folder for secure sharing with a cross-functional team over the internet. Selected unmanaged files become manageable with the automatic assignment of revision control identity and population of relevant data-management tags.

(www.centricsoftware.com)

Fios Inc., an electronic discovery services provider, and Nexidia, a developer and provider of phonetic-based technology for audio search, have announced a partnership designed to help clients review and analyze electronic audio files as part of discovery. The two companies are extending Nexidia's phonetic audio search technologies with Fios' electronic discovery services to provide clients with an approach to manage complex litigation and regulatory compliance matters.

(www.nexidia.com; www.fiosinc.com)

Exalead, a provider of search software for business and the web, has announced new versions of its unified search software products for desktop and workgroup environments. The new releases--exalead one:desktop 4.5 and exalead one:workgroup 4.5--offer several new performance enhancements as well as support for new file formats and email clients.

The new exalead one:desktop 4.5 Professional Edition has no indexing limitations. This capability is also part of exalead one:workgroup 4.5. Users will have the ability to index an unlimited number of documents, regardless of format or location, at no additional cost. Exalead will continue to offer a free downloadable version of its exalead one:desktop software product that can index up to 100,000 documents. As a standalone product, exalead one:desktop 4.5 offers unified access to information located on a hard drive, in applications like email or on the web. The new functionality of release 4.5 builds on Exalead's user interface and patented navigation technology, which allows users to search by serendipity. For every search query, Exalead returns a list of categories and related terms to allow users to broaden or refine a search by location, author, or format, or to exclude irrelevant terms and topics.

New features and enhancements include: infinite scalability; fast query response; the ability to optimize search performance on any PC; expanded email client support; support for 300+ file formats; rich document preview; and optimized for multi-core and multi-processor PCs. The new exalead one:desktop 4.5 and exalead one:workgroup 4.5 products are currently available for download. Pricing for exalead one:desktop 4.5 Professional Edition begins at $60 per user, while pricing for exalead one:workgroup begins at $2,995 per server. Users can download the free edition of exalead one:desktop 4.5, which can index up to 100,000 documents, at the Exalead site.

(www.exalead.com)

Convera Corporation, a provider of search technologies for professional workers, has announced general availability of RetrievalWare 8.2, the latest version of the company's enterprise search technology. Some of the new RetrievalWare 8.2 capabilities include: Distributed Indexing, increased performance for large document collections using distributed, parallelized indexing, and configurable real time alerting; Security, where new access control plug-in allows for custom document level security implementations and real time validation. Proxy login through web services is designed to facilitate portal integration; Search Interface, deployed as 100% pure web services and delivered as a reference application for developing customized applications; Migration, new tools for migrations from earlier versions of the software; and Platform Support, added support to keep up with platforms and databases, including SQL 2005, Oracle 10g, Solaris 10, and Red Hat AS 4. RetrievalWare 8.2 is available immediately.

(www.convera.com)

PureVideo Networks, operator of video sites, StupidVideos.com (comedy) and GrindTV.com (action sports), has unveiled its first utility, called PureVideo Search. Still in beta, PureVideo Search is a meta-search engine for video, combining a crawl-based search with a feed-based search, and returning results from the entire web. PureVideo Networks' proprietary analysis determines rankings, displaying each result with an associated thumbnail image, and a link to view the video at the respective publisher site.

In addition, users of PureVideo Search have access to more than 35 charts presenting popular videos on the top sites, concerning music, sports, comedy, viral videos, entertainment, and news. These sites include MySpace, Rolling Stone, AOL Music, ESPN, Fox Sports, Comedy Central, YouTube, Break.com, CNN, BusinessWeek, and others. Both GrindTV.com and StupidVideos.com will take advantage of the PureVideo Search engine to help power broader web search returns for their users. PureVideo Search will also provide PureVideo Networks with trend data about broadband video consumption.

(www.purevideo.com)

Baynote, Inc. has launched Baynote.org, a community-based website that encourages the adoption of business-ready open source search. Visitors to the site can take advantage of search for their business website, and may choose to have the software hosted for free or may download either the Baynote Image or the latest Apache Nutch installation package.

Baynote.org offers three options for Open Source Search: a hosted version, an image, and a native installation. Visitors who download Baynote Image can begin using open source search almost immediately. The Baynote Image can be run on server, desktop, or even laptop-class machines and requires only the free VMware player linked from Baynote.org. Businesses may also download the Baynote Distribution enabling them to install, and configure the latest version of Apache Nutch while benefiting from community forums, tutorials, documentation, and configuration example code.

Baynote has also launched Baynote Go, a free offering that provides businesses with search for their websites without any software, hosting, or support costs. Baynote Go delivers search results to visitors and is backed by the "Wisdom of Community"--which analyzes and provides actionable recommendations based on the emergent behaviors of peers, experts, and the greater site community. Baynote Go is designed for businesses of any size that are focused on improving online conversion rates while reducing the cost of managing their website. Baynote Go is built on the Apache Foundation's Nutch search engine--open source search engine. Baynote has extended Nutch to provide business-ready website search including robust hosting, administration, and community-based support, all free of charge.

Websites using Baynote Go can also take advantage of Baynote's Content Guidance, which analyzes visitor search and navigation behaviors, then dynamically customizes the website search and navigational experience for each user. In addition, site navigation is streamlined, with a reduction from 6 to 1 in the average number of clicks needed to find information and complete transactions. Baynote Go is available immediately.

(www.baynote.org; www.baynote.com/go)

WebSideStory has introduced Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (Ajax) to its technology portfolio. Called Active Browsing, the extended service of WebSideStory Search is said to enable any e-commerce site to integrate one of Web 2.0's enabling technologies into its product search results.

The company claims the result is greatly enhanced speed and interactivity, as well as an improved customer shopping experience in which shoppers are able to engage in "clickless browsing," the ability to preview additional product facets and "more like this" categories by simply rolling their mouse over specific search results.

Active Browsing works by transforming site search into an interactive application that accesses server data optimally, and allows for user interface tools such as "bubbles" that overlay the page to provide more information and navigation choices.

Active browsing is currently being used on Jockey.com.

TEMIS has launched its first industry-specific edition of Luxid, the company's new information intelligence software.

The company explains that Luxid for Life Sciences has been structured into three stackable software applications:

Annotation Factory performs the extraction of high-value information from text. Its deep understanding of all major languages powers the ability to reliably identify entities and relationships. Luxid natively embeds four exclusive life sciences annotators, based on TEMIS Skill Cartridge technology.

Information Mart is described as an easy-to-administrate platform that federates heterogeneous sources and enriches the harvested documents, using Annotation Factory in order to build a knowledgebase.

Information Analytics is a Web-based and feature-rich portal enabling information discovery on top of Information Mart. Its innovative User Interface provides access to advanced search and filtering, document navigation, time analysis, cross-tab views, information mapping and clustering. The Knowledge Browser turns any document set into a navigable knowledge graph, displaying extracted entities semantic relationships. Information Analytics also offers multiple-view dashboards through user-defined and shared centers of interest.

Luxid for Life Sciences was designed from the ground up on UIMA (the new standard applicative framework for unstructured analytics created by IBM). The platform is also integrated with IBM OmniFind Enterprise Search.