Search Done Right

Every enterprise has to decide how to handle its high-value, searchable information. What is high-value information, you ask? Some examples:

• descriptions of staff expertise within large service firms that essentially sell knowledge, like Accenture, law firms, and other consultancies
• product descriptions for the products for sale by a retail firm
• majors, course descriptions, research projects, centers etc. at a university
• clinician backgrounds, specialties, contact information, and photographs at a medical center

Almost all enterprises today decide implicitly that their high-value information and the rest of the enterprise information are not to be handled separately. Instead, they index all information in the same way and then trust that high-value info will bubble to the top of search results via the magic of ranking algorithms. But it doesn’t really work that way.

Now, which businesses rely most critically on their high-value information? Answer: Web search engines like Ask, Google, Live, and Yahoo (AGLY), whose highest-value information is the paid listings (ads) that generate most of their revenue. Does AGLY treat ads specially? You bet they do:

• Special tools let advertisers customize their ads and specify in detail when to show them.
• AGLY indexes these ads in a custom way, different from the regular organic (non-revenue-making) search results
• AGLY displays the ads differently. For example, Google lists many ads in a right-hand column and shows several ads at the top, above the search results

Just as the AGLY benefit from custom treatment of their high-value information (ads), enterprises should do the same. There are three basic steps:

1. Pose and answer this question: For our enterprise’s intranet or web search engine, what is the high-value information that users need or that our business should promote? This isn’t a technical matter, but a business process issue.
2. Index the high-value information separately. For example, if it resides in a large spreadsheet, then index its contents by row and column, as appropriate, rather than as one humongous document.
3. When there’s a match to the search query, spotlight the high-value information separately on the search-results page.

Want examples? First, visit the AGLY websites and notice what they do with their ads. For a government website example, try a search for social security at FirstGov.gov (now renamed USA.gov) and notice the spotlighted FAQ hits above the regular search results.

The FirstGov/USA portal considers FAQs high-value information because they correspond to common citizen queries that are carefully answered and updated by skilled librarians. The FAQs should be custom-indexed because you don’t want to index all the information on an FAQ page, just the question itself, not the answer, related questions, take-our-survey-please, etc. Finally, the FAQs are spotlighted to encourage users to check there first.

Determining your high-value information is a high-value-add business process issue. Your answers should be painlessly addressed by configuring an enterprise search engine, without custom software development or endless vendor services.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 17th, 2007 at 8:24 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.