Search Done Right

A previous post introduced a distinction between high-value enterprise information and all the rest, arguing that users and the enterprise can benefit by:

1. identifying the high-value information
2. indexing it in an appropriate, custom way
3. spotlighting it within the search results page

For example, let’s take LECG, a NASDAQ-traded company with a market capitalization of around $438M. They have “more than 1,000 experts and professionals across 30 disciplines in 10 countries” and offer this profile:

“LECG is a leading expert services firm. Our highly credentialed experts and professional staff conduct economic and financial analyses to provide objective opinions and advice that help resolve complex disputes and inform legislative, judicial, regulatory and business decision makers.”

I work in enterprise software, so I tried a full-text keyword search on ’software patents’ at their CV search engine on LECG.com and got these results. Oddly, only one of the four listed experts had either of the words ’software’ or ‘patent[s]’ anywhere in their matching bio page, so clearly more things are going on here, besides the lack of custom treatment of high-value information. (Actually, the experts appear because ’software’ and ‘patents’ are keywords that appear in their CVs, linked to from their bio pages.) That aside, what should LECG’s search results look like?

This typical expert description from the LECG bio pages contains a photo, name, title, email address, phone number, CV link, and a one-paragraph bio.

On a keyword search, I believe that LECG’s search engine should spotlight their experts with photo, contact info, an excerpt that matches the user query, educational background, etc. all on the results page, and provide further search results that shows the matching context of the search query. For how this could look, check out this query on ‘ford mustang’ at USA.gov and note the Mustang photograph together with safety and mileage information.

Probably all the LECG bio pages are in a uniform format so custom indexing, to make their structured text information come alive, should be a snap.

Doing search right in such cases will improve site visitors’ impressions of the company and its expertise, and avoid forcing users to have recourse to general web search engines that may lead them astray or display negative information on the company. The same design principle holds for intranets of large knowledge-based organizations, where an enhanced search engine for company expertise will increase usage and expedite collaboration.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 25th, 2007 at 3:26 pm 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.