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Search Engine Applications Focus of New Research Report

Search engine applications have become an essential part of the information landscape in today's enterprises. From major corporations to startup companies, to government and academic institutions, search engines have been pushed into the spotlight as the "go-to" technology to pull corporate information assets into a common framework. While employee access to information is critical, today's enterprise must extend its Enterprise Search solution and the information it provides to customers, partners, and others through Web-facing applications.

In recognition of the growing importance of Enterprise Search, Information Today, Inc. has released a new research study — Enterprise Search Deployment, Usage, and Trends - that provides real-world insights into how widely Enterprise Search applications are being deployed, what features end users want, and how satisfied they are with the solutions in place.

Enterprise Search Deployment, Usage & Trends Key Findings

Multiple search engines are common within organizations that have search applications in place, with 62% of survey respondents having more than one search solution. Even more reflective of the technology's importance, 27% had four or more solutions in place.

Google's Enterprise Search solution was frequently installed in respondents' organizations, or it was under consideration. Autonomy/Verity search applications dominated, however.

Enterprise search applications are not just for internal use by organizational personnel. Our study found that making enterprise-controlled content outside the organization was common practice. The primary formats searchable now, and that will most likely remain at the core of enterprise search, are such desktop application files as Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access. What additional capabilities do users want? The ability to search video, audio, and image files.

The most highly desired additional features for enterprise search that our survey respondents identified are automatic categorization/taxonomies, topic maps, results clustering, and visualization of results.

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The study, co-authored by Jean Bedord of Shore Communications and Faulkner Information Services, a division of Information Today, Inc., includes specific recommendations for organizations considering Enterprise Search deployments and upgrades, and for vendors seeking customers in this dynamic space.

A Web-based survey of 252 highly qualified information professionals provides some of the data underlying this new report; market-leading vendor representatives were interviewed, as well, for their perspectives on the Enterprise Search marketplace.  

Analyst Jean Bedord noted that one of the most interesting findings from the study is that while more than 80 percent of survey respondents' organizations have at least one Enterprise Search solution deployed now, more than one quarter of them — 27% — have four or more Enterprise Search solutions in operation.

"Conceptually, this means that one search solution may be chosen for corporate-wide access to text-based information," Ms. Bedord explained, and different search solutions may be utilized for access across structured databases and more complex applications - like customer records. Implementing the first solution involves a significant learning curve, so installing additional solutions can be easier," she said. "Once the value of the initial search solution is established, the organization is more likely to see the need for more search implementations."

The study found that 59% of respondents plan on upgrading or enhancing their search solutions in the relatively near future; 27% of them within the next six months. The most desired additional, new Enterprise Search feature named by survey respondents was automatic categorization. That feature was named by 34% — followed by topic maps (31%), results clustering (30%), and visualization of results (29%).

The full 51-page study — Enterprise Search Deployment, Usage, and Trends — is available now in downloadable PDF format at Information Today's Enterprise Search Center Web site. The price is $495 (USD).

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About Information Today, Inc.

Information Today, Inc. (ITI) is a leading publisher and conference organizer in the information and knowledge management industries. The company is widely known as the publisher of premier information and knowledge management titles such as Information Today, Speech Technology Magazine, ONLINE, CRM, Searcher, KM World, and EContent. In addition periodicals, ITI publishes many books and directories pertaining to the information and knowledge management industries. ITI is also the sponsor and organizer of many industry conferences, including Web Search University, Speech Tek, KM World & Intranets, Enterprise Search Summit, Streaming Media, Buying & Selling eContent, Computers in Libraries, and Internet Librarian.

About Shore Communications, Inc.

Shore Communications, Inc. is a leading research and advisory service focusing on organizations that create, market, purchase, deploy and use professionally oriented content and the technologies that enable its value in individual and collaborative environments. Unlike many other research and advisory services, Shore is unique in its focus on understanding not just content or technology or users, but the complex interplay between these forces that create value in today's marketplace. At the core of Shore's operations is a talented and experienced team of analysts and specialists who are dedicated to an unbiased and objective approach to serving customer needs.

"Improving Content ROI" Contest from ITI and Babson College 

Do you know your company's "content ROI?  Tell us your story!

Go to http://infotoday.com/it/babson/ to sign up! 

Information Today and Babson College's Working Knowledge Research Center are working on a special "Discovering Content ROI" (return on investment) contest beginning this month.

The purpose is to identify the best strategies used by companies to measure and enhance the value of their third-party content purchases. This contest will evaluate and judge the best emerging practices for solving this challenge by recognizing companies with the best stories and descriptions of their practices for driving business results through the use of third-party content.

Stories and descriptions may cover various topics. Click here to participate in the contest. Each member of the winning submission team will win a new iPod nano (up to 10 nanos). Submission teams can include one or more members of the library staff as well as line employees, who may be able to contribute details on how content was used in workflows.

The emphasis for this spring's ENTERPRISE SEARCH SUMMIT [May 14-16, 2007, Hilton New York, New York City] is on "extending search," as search becomes not just an application but a major computing platform.

The agenda focuses on how enterprise search software and related applications really work inside organizations and covers the complex issues and problems that challenge experienced search managers.

Expert speakers tackle tough topics such as tuning search to deliver optimum results, making the most of search logs and analytics, applying Web services solutions to metadata challenges, developing topic maps, and much more.

Breakout sessions pack more hours of programming into the concentrated conference schedule and give you the chance to select topics of special interest to customize your conference experience.

Download the advance program.

Register now.

What is the Enterprise Search Sourcebook?

The 2007 edition of the Enterprise Search Sourcebook is a complete industry resource for executives and technology managers who are implementing enterprise search within their organizations. The 2007 Sourcebook provides in-depth articles on choosing, implementing, and justifying enterprise search solutions. The Sourcebook examines the strategies and skill sets necessary to make an organization's content not only searchable, but "findable". Articles will cover things like the business and technology ROI of internal search, how to make buying decisions, and how to solve the complex problems that challenge search managers.

How Can You Get Your Free Copy?  Just click here. 

If you've already signed up for a copy, it should be arriving in your mailbox shortly.  Keep a look out for the distinctive blue cover with a content cloud map.

Reportlinker has announced its vertical search engine dedicated to open access market research reports. On a single screen, it gathers more than 1,2 million reports, published by sources like governments, embassies, national statistics agencies, trade unions, etc.

The launch of Reportlinker is intended to make it easier to quickly find and access relevant information using general public tools. General public tools promote merchant content, boosted by search marketing (SM) and search engine optimization (SEO) techniques, making relevant open access information more difficult to find. Reportlinker differentiation relies on its specialization in open access market research reports. Using this tool, users can search the long tail of free market research without the "noise of not so relevant merchant results". The professional research engine also includes in its index many results from the deep web that are not even accessible through general search engines. More than 1,2 million public reports, published by trusted sources, are now available in just a few clicks.

Hyperwords has released Hyperwords version 2.0. With Hyperwords all words on the web become interactive not just links. Users can select any word and choose from commands including search, references (definitions and Wikipedia etc.), maps, translation and conversion directly in the page, shop, email, tag, blog and more. All are fully customizable. Hyperwords 2.0 introduces inline conversions, an editable menu, translations, and technical and usability improvements. Hyperwords is an extension for the Firefox web browser and is available for free from the Hyperwords website.

(www.gethyperwords.com; www.hyperwords.net)

Quintura has announced the launch of its re-engineered visual search offering. The company says the software is based on its See & Find concept, which allows users to see and refine their searches within an interactive tag cloud to quickly find relevant information.

Quintura's graphical user interface presents search results in two panes--the left contains a preset interactive tag cloud, and the right pane lists search results. The company claims the intuitive nature of the cloud allows users to refine their search by clicking on tags that appear in the cloud. Holding the cursor over a tag causes new, related tags to appear surrounding an original tag and search results to change in the scrollable right pane. Clicking a tag in the cloud enables users to refine a search and navigate through visual clusters of search results.

SK&A Information Services has released Provider HealthNet, described as a search tool that allows online access to a database of more than 2 million healthcare practitioners and decision makers. The company further explains that Provider HealthNet is a portal to a relational database of practicing healthcare professionals, including more than 610,000 practicing physicians.

The database is verified by phone every six months and includes pharmacists, dentists, nurses, PAs and hospital administrators. The offering allows users to search for contact information such as names and addresses, phone and fax, job titles, specialties, affiliations, license numbers, DEA numbers and more.

A free, 14-day trial of Provider HealthNet is available here.

Convera Corporation, a provider of search technologies for publishers, has launched the beta phase of Convera Publisher Control Panel. The new service is designed to enable print and online publishers to add, manage, and refine vertical search capabilities so they can develop search-based revenues for their websites. Convera Publisher Control Panel is available for customers of Convera's hosted vertical search service that provides a customized search engine for content publishers serving professional markets.

With the Convera Publisher Control Panel, publishers can directly manage the search experience for their professional communities and leverage vertical search as a hub to develop online communities and build advertising relationships. The solution's features include: whitelist management, with Convera Publisher Control Panel, publishers can apply their industry and editorial knowledge to define a list of relevant sites to improve the relevancy of search results. Convera also provides publishers with appropriate whitelists based on industry specific taxonomies; indexing proprietary content, so that publishers can manage the indexing of their own content and provide refined search access to it; relevancy tools, where publishers can rank websites to refine the relevancy of search results and determine the depth and frequency at which specific websites can be crawled; and measurement reports, through crawl and traffic reports, publishers can continually monitor the relevance of specific web content and refine search capabilities based on actual search usage.

Through the service, Convera develops vertical search solutions that cover an unlimited number of professions and industries. The hosted service provides publishers with control of advertising relationships and editorial oversight.

(www.convera.com)

LexisNexis and FAST have announced an agreement whereby FAST InStream will be integrated with LexisNexis' Applied Discovery online review application. The companies say the integration will enable legal professionals to conduct faster, more precise and efficient review of documents during the discovery phase of any case.

Applied Discovery is part of the Discovery Services group within the larger LexisNexis Litigation Services organization. It offers legal professionals at law firms and corporate counsel a portfolio of choices for their varying e-discovery needs.

DocuLex Inc., creators of litigation support software delivers a native data search and collaboration tool, DC Detective, with the new version 5.0 of Discovery Cracker. DC Detective is a secure, browser based data preview tool designed to enable users to perform complex metadata searches as well as tagging, data grouping, and native review of their files. Users and their clients can collaborate to set their EDD strategy early, culling large volumes of data down, online, to discover what matters most for their case. Files selected in DC Detective are delivered to Discovery Cracker's command console where they are processed according to the projects requirements. DC Detective is hosted by DocuLex clients and included with every license of Discovery Cracker 5.0. It has no pre-set limit on the number of users accessing data, provided they've been granted security permissions by the administrator.

(www.doculex.com)

WebFeat has announced it has launched an automated federated search engine. WebFeat Express version 2.1 is designed to enable libraries to configure their WebFeat federated search engines using the latest release of the WebFeat Administrative Console (WAC).

Using the WebFeat Administrative Console (WAC), librarians can select databases for inclusion in their WebFeat system, as well as their own library catalog and remote user authentication. WAC automatically configures the library's WebFeat system--performing any required handshake with the library's content providers. The latest release of the WebFeat Administrative Console offers a variety of new features. In addition to the ability to manage database menus, subject categories, and authentication, WAC provides administrators with a toolkit for customizing and branding user interfaces. These include a choice of search and results interfaces that can be branded with logos and library colors, as well as the ability to paste custom library HTML headers, footers, and menu bars to integrate WebFeat interfaces with existing library web pages. WebFeat Express "Quicksearch" search boxes may also be pasted into any library web page for further integration. WebFeat Express is powered by WebFeat's patented federated search technology and supports over 6,000 databases, designed to enable it to search virtually any searchable database or catalog. WebFeat is designed to enable library patrons to search any or all of a library's electronic resources from a single interface. WebFeat is also compatible with all standard authentication protocols, designed to allow library administrators to configure authentication for in-library and remote users. 

Libraries may obtain access to WAC to configure their own WebFeat Express system for evaluation at the WebFeat website.

(http://webfeat.org/products/nohassle_trial.asp)

Quintura, a search startup, has announced the launch of its re-engineered visual search. Quintura helps visually find web pages, images, and video content. The new search experience is based on the See & Find concept where users can see and refine their searches within an interactive tag cloud and instantly find relevant information.

Quintura offers a way to refine and narrow a search. The graphical user interface of Quintura presents search results in two panes--the left pane contains a preset interactive tag cloud and the right pane lists search results. The nature of the cloud allows web users to refine their search by clicking on tags that appear in the cloud. Holding a mouse cursor over a tag in the cloud causes new, related tags to appear surrounding an original tag and search results to change in the scrollable right pane. Clicking a tag in the cloud the web users can refine a search and navigate through visual clusters of search results.

Quintura displays graphical images (favorite icons) next to tags (search terms) in the tag cloud. The icon is associated with a URL that corresponds to a search term. Clicking the icon users can visit web pages right from the tag cloud.

(www.quintura.com)

Generate Inc., a provider of real-time contextual information, has announced the release of Generate g2: 2.0. This release, available to users immediately, features a new dashboard, new peer group affiliations, additional trigger events, enhanced functionality, and performance, and additional search capabilities. Version 2.0 is also certified for Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) 7. This release provides users with increased customization and performance for prospecting for qualified opportunities and lead development.

Features in the 2.0 release include: a newly designed dashboard that displays an immediate overview of the day's events based on each user's preferences. Elements include current information on companies, executives, news, and trigger events; peer affiliation where users can see how other users, within their organization, connect to companies and executives; Microsoft IE7 compatibility so that Generate g2 is certified for Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7; quick search where the interface includes a "quick search" button that allows users to search for the latest information in the company, executive, trigger, and news modules.

Searches can be customized by company revenue, number of employees, region, industry, triggers events, and other selects; executive web search so that users can gather information about executives from the web without leaving the application. Functionality combines the executive and their work history into a Google search displayed in a separate window; tracking commercial lease signings and bankruptcies; a "connection on-demand" button has been added to enhance the company and executive search performance. When search results are displayed, users can see the connection value to each company and executive resulting from the search with a click of this button. Connections show how each user, and others within their organization, are connected to companies and executives via three degrees of separation; and additional performance enhancements include group view expansion (designed to allow users to expand/collapse group views), news search performance (designed to allow users to conduct faster searches for the latest news) and default relationship mapping (displays the user's last relationship map layout).

(www.generateinc.com)  

Wizzard Software has signed the final merger agreement for the acquisition of podcasting company Webmayhem Inc., dba Liberated Syndication, which will create a podcasting distribution network. Liberated Syndication (Libsyn), founded in 2004 by four entrepreneurs, currently delivers almost two million audio and video shows per day to millions of consumers around the world.

The binding, enforceable merger agreement provides for Wizzard to issue stock and cash to the Webmayhem stockholders in exchange for all outstanding shares of Webmayhem. After the close of this material acquisition, Webmayhem will be a wholly owned subsidiary of Wizzard. Completion of the Webmayhem acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions, which will be discussed in a Current Report on Form 8-K that Wizzard will file with the Securities and Exchange Commission no later than Monday, March 5th, 2007.

Additionally, the company announced the launch of Wizzard Media, a division for its new media business. The new entity currently serves over 60 million downloads a month. Wizzard Software expects to integrate text-to-speech and speech recognition services into the Wizzard Media Network: Liberated Syndication, Switchpod, and Blast Podcast. These features are designed to provide podcast creators with tools for search engine indexing as well as transcription and blogging integration.

(www.wizzard.tv)

Local.com Corporation, a provider in the local search industry, has announced an $8 million private placement to Hearst Interactive Media, a division of Hearst Corporation, and Greenway Capital. The proceeds are to be used for general working capital and strategic initiatives. The investment consists of 9% convertible debentures due February 2009. The convertible debentures are convertible into 1,990,050 shares of the Company's common stock at a conversion price of $4.02 per share. In connection with the sale of the convertible debentures, the company also issued to the investors warrants to purchase up to 796,020 additional shares of the company's common stock at a price of $4.82 and up to 796,020 additional shares of the company's common stock at a price of $5.63. The warrants are exercisable through February 2012. GunnAllen Financial acted as investment banker for Local.com on the transaction.

(www.hearst.com; www.local.com)

Quigo, a provider of site and content-targeted, auction-based advertising, and Pixsy Corporation, a media search platform that powers private label image and video search engines, have announced a partnership. Under the agreement, Quigo and Pixsy will create private-label, location-and topic-specific visual search portals that will include relevant visual content along with contextualized, performance based advertising. Pixsy will also deploy a private label version of Quigo's AdSonar platform on its sites. Pixsy's Media Search Platform is designed to enable consumers to search for multimedia content including videos and images of local points of interest or relevant topics such as entertainment, hotels, museums, sporting events, or restaurants.

These targeted portals will integrate with Quigo's AdSonar online ad network, designed to enable local and national advertisers to offer content-targeted messages on a pay-for-performance basis. The first deployments are scheduled to launch later this quarter. Pixsy will use its proprietary technology to capture, index, and deliver the most current and relevant thumbnail images and video. Users will be able to access this location-and topic-specific visual content when they search for keywords such as travel, hotels, restaurants, nightlife, golf, or shopping. Quigo will deploy a customized private-label version of its AdSonar platform to enable local and national marketers to bid on pay-for-performance advertising that will be targeted to the video and image content on these sites. Content and advertising will be dynamically updated as well.

(www.pixsy.com; www.quigo.com)

Interwoven has announced a number of new offerings designed to transform content into assets for improving customer relationships and driving revenue growth.

The portfolio includes Interwoven Segmentation and Analytics, a new solution for increasing the conversion of prospects to customers across online channels; Interwoven Collaborative Document Management, a significantly enhanced solution for improving enterprise collaboration of document-intensive business processes; and Interwoven Brand Management and Interwoven Multi-Channel Delivery, new solutions to manage, extend and increase the value of an organization's brand across all customer-facing communication channels.

The Interwoven Segmentation and Analytics solution helps businesses create, deliver, analyze and apply content to transform their online presence, giving marketers a flexible and agile solution for converting prospects into customers. The company reports that a key component of the solution is Interwoven Targeting, a new product that provides online customer segmentation and a dynamic content-targeting rules engine that delivers the right content to the right customer at the right time.

Interwoven says the centerpiece of Collaborative Document Management, Interwoven WorkSite MP 5.0, provides users with enhanced search capabilities and a richer user experience powered by Ajax and other next-generation Web-based technologies and services. The company adds that this update to WorkSite also includes new implementation capabilities that speed deployment and strengthen business process management for interoperability with other enterprise systems and processes. WorkSite MP 5.0 also includes comprehensive capabilities for facilitating e-discovery and e-mail management, as well as improved language support.

The Brand Management offering provides a central source for digital assets and marketing content, including rich media, to ensure that brands are always correctly and consistently represented. The Multi-Channel Delivery solution is said to provide a framework for quickly and accurately delivering content across multiple customer channels.