Search Tools Product Reports

Ultraseek

(Currently an Autonomy product, still under development)

Ultraseek Information
XPA (Java) API

Price: (as of 2005)
   - Incremental licenses available (average license has been $5,000 - $20,000)
   - Unlimited documents and traffic, four year license: $75,000.
   - Now includes most modules, including the Ultraseek Content Classification Engine (CCE), XPA Java API and multilingual support.
   - Support fee is now 15% of the license fee (down from 20%)
 
Platforms: Windows 2000, Windows 2003; Windows XP Professional. Unix: Solaris 9 and 10 (SPARC), Suse Linux 9.0 (Intel compatible), Red Hat Linux 7.1 and Enterprise Linux 4.0 (Intel compatible)

Features

• Powerful and scalable search engine for thousands to millions of pages
• Robot spider can handle dynamic data, cookies, session IDs, Lotus Domino alternate views
• Security integrates with Windows NTLMv2 challenge-response, eRoom digital workplace and Netegrity SiteMinder.
• Supports form-based authentication using server cookies
• SSL spider module for HTTPS access to secure servers.
• Distributed indexing and robot spider cooperation.
• Indexes file systems, Microsoft Exchange Public Folders, Sharepoint web sites, and Microsoft Outlook mail messages
• Automatic recognition of hypermail and MHonArc mailing list archives, indexing message content only.
• Indexes databases using ODBC, JDBC, and direct Sybase and Oracle access on Unix.
• Web Services SOAP "visitURL" call allows external applications to ask for an index update on a page
• Supports "blog ping XML-RFC" protocol to ask for an index update on a page.
• Can combine external metadata with page content when indexing.
• Page Expert provides tools for matching content and ignoring navigation in documents such as email archives and blogs.
• Automatic title generation options for pages with empty or repeated titles
• Index file formats: text HTML, XML, RTF, Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Adobe Acrobat (PDF), Adobe FrameMaker, WordPerfect, Lotus 1-2-3, WordPro, Lotus Freelance Graphics, StarOffice, OpenOffice, zipped (compressed), gzipped, Postcript (using installed ghostscript), Macromedia Flash (swf), Microsoft Access (.mdb), and hundreds more, using the newest Verity Keyview Filters.
• Automatic language and encoding identification.
• Stores index words in Unicode for internationalization.
• Works with multiple languages and character systems, including language modules for English, French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebrew, Thai, Albanian, Estonian, Farsi, Finnish, Hungarian, Icelandic, Latvian, Polish, Romanian, and Turkish.
• Automatic language-based search term stemming.
• Hit-level Authentication integrates with access control systems, only displays search results the user is allowed to see
• Search thesaurus file (synonyms) for suggestions and automatic query expansion, set per language.
• Search options include date ranges, HTML meta tags, Dublin Core, XML tag fields and attributes, now recognizes wildcards * and ? at the beginning, end or middle of words.
• Spell checking queries based on the terms in the collection, upgraded for fewer false positives.
• "Quick Links" - Search Suggestions in results, created by search admins, applied per language and collection.
• Group by Location clusters search results using URL strings, allowing a broader set of results to appear in the first page.
• "Passage-Based Summaries" option to show results items with the matched search terms marked within context extracted from the document.
• Extensive web-based administration interface, including specifying roles with permission to access only styles, quicklinks and/or reports.
• Special versions with Chinese and Japanese language customization, including admin interface.
• Flexible and customizable search forms and results pages, with Python hooks for additional processing, and SSI (Server-side includes) in the results pages.
• Options to adjust relevance ranking based on URL pattern, meta tags, etc.
• Integration with ad servers Net Gravity and Accipter
• Layout Manager for interactive design of search results pages, also uses css for colors and fonts
• Integrates with frameworks including IBM WebSphere Portal and Broadvision.
• Results in XML format contain all features of HTML results.
• Can search and get results via Web Services SOAP calls (5.1)
• Extensive query and access logs available to web reporting tools.
• Search Reports include daily summaries, date-range reports including click-through information, month-to-month query trends and so on.
• Support for US Government Section 508 standards (disabled accessibility compliance).
• CCE (Content Classification Engine module) for creation of directories and display of search results with categories.

News and Articles

• Speeding up enterprise search InfoWorld, January 21, 2005 by Mike Keck
  Reviews Ultraseek 5.3.1, noting its ease of setup and use, especially the Layout Manager for designing the search interface. Reports that the default configuration returned many false hits (probably due to Ultraseek's default setting to match any words in the query - AR) but notes that using the new Page Expert to exclude navigation text and the Secure Results Filtering to provide hit-level access and view control, the results were very good. Other new features include a Weblog Update trigger to notify the search engine when blogs require indexing, and multiple simultaneous spiders per host. Rated 8.6 out of 10. Note that author wrongly assumes that Ultraseek is a lightweight version of Verity K2, rather than a separate search engine now sharing a few features with K2.


• 'Google-mania' ignites search technology Network World, September 13, 2004 by Ann Bednarz
  An overview of the problems enterprises have with finding information, including complex queries and multiple repositories. Search administrators recommend trying before buying, defining problems such as dynamic updates, repetitive language, context, scale and query options. Search engines mentioned include Ultraseek, Autonomy, the Google Search Appliance, and iPhrase.


• Verity Ultraseek 5.2: Search and You Will Find Intranet Journal, February 25, 2004 by Troy Dreier
  Describes new features, including integration with Vignette, TIBCO and WebSphere, document display, and upgrade path for users of the older Verity Information Server. Summarizes features of the search engine, including access control, search suggestions and indexing a wide variety of file formats.
  
  
• Value-Oriented Search Engine Gets a Face Lift Intelligent Enterprise, February 10, 2004
  Mentions new features in Ultraseek 5.2, including portlet integration, spidering JavaScript links, Keyview display of MS Word and Excel documents, Web services interfaces for .NET and Java J2EE.
  
  
• New Ultraseek search engine remaps dated Dartmouth website The Dartmouth, February 7, 2005 by Jessica Chen
  Describes the value of the search engine, testing against Google Search Appliance and NorthernLight's Enterprise Search.
  
  
• Johns Hopkins Chooses Verity Ultraseek Econtent Magazine, October 7, 2003
  Quick summary of the documents at the hundreds of Johns Hopkins Institutions web sites, and their ongoing use of Ultraseek to provide search access.
  
  
• Ultraseek Version 5.1 Verity Press Release, July 2003
  This version adds significant improvements to the search and results page layout system, moving from a set of HTML templates with Python code to a more interactive approach which can be delegated to web site managers or search administration assistants. New search log analysis and reporting provides additional data and trend analysis. Other features include generating titles from content for untitled documents, options to cluster search results by path, and a long-time Verity feature, search term highlighting in target pages when the user follows a search result link. Can now index StarOffice, OpenOffice and zipped (compressed) documents.
  
  
• Inktomi Enterprise Search Customers Face Uncertainty (PDF version) Gartner Report

  Discussion by Gartner analysts looks at the purchase within the enterprise search marketplace. Points out that by moving up to enterprise level, Verity was vulnerable to lower-end search engines such as Inktomi and Google on price. However, it now faces a difficult dual product strategy, and may not have the desired synergies because many Inktomi customers are satisfied with the current product capabilities. Recommends that enterprises using Inktomi should pressure Verity to explain how long it will support the product, and define future directions, and that prospects wait for Verity to demonstrate ability to continue development.

• Analysis of the Verity Purchase of Inktomi Enterprise Search (Ultraseek) Information Today, November 18, 2002

  Avi Rappoport of SearchTools.com analyzes the purchase of the Inktomi enterprise search engine (formerly Ultraseek) by Verity. This Information Today article describes the business relationships and plans of the companies, features of the Ultraseek (then Inktomi Search) engine, and the search engine marketplace.

• Inktomi Enterprise Search to Be Acquired by Verity Inktomi Press Release

  Verity announced on November 13 that it is purchasing Inktomi's enterprise search software business (formerly known as "Ultraseek") for $25 million in cash. Verity, which has recently concentrated on knowledge management and social networking, says that it is doing this to "meet the needs of our enterprise customers" who can later migrate to the "advanced products portfolio". Verity says that they will continue to develop the search engine, XML toolkit and Quiver classification software.

• Inktomi to Concentrate on Search, Buy Quiver: July 2002

  Inktomi has announced that it's going to direct resources to Web and enterprise search, reducing the content networking part of its business. It is also buying Quiver, which has developed a content categorization tool. Quiver has a mixed manual and automated classification workflow system, allowing editorial staff to adjust taxonomies and document categorization for best results.

• Inktomi [Ultraseek] wins Network Computing Magazine Award Network Computing, May 14, 2001
  Calls the enterprise search software "both effective and flexible", now that it includes a database connector.
  
  
• Quiver To Integrate Classification with Ultraseek (then Inktomi Search) Press release, June 25, 2001
  Semi-automatic taxonomy and categorization tool will integrate Ultraseek (then Inktomi Search) Software to provide a complete information retrieval and navigation system. Quiver combines automated classification with editorial control to use human judgment in the processing.
  
  
• Johns Hopkins Cures Its Search Woes InternetWeek, December 28, 2000 by David Drucker
  Report on how the university quickly ramped up using Ultraseek (then Inktomi Search) before a television show brought thousands of new site visitors. Installation was quick and allowed time for testing and tuning, while still allowing the search index to scale and respond quickly. Results are excellent, users get accurate results and web sites within the university are improving.
  
  
• SecurityFocus.com Security Advisory for version 3 November 2000 Does not apply to version 4.0
  Report of an input validation error with older versions of the software -- all customers should update to version 4.0 and/or restrict administration access and provide user-oriented error pages.
  
  
• Search Engines: The Hunt Is On Network Computing Magazine: October 16, 2000 by Avi Rappoport
  In-depth discussion of search engines for e-commerce and other web sites covers features and future trends, software vs. services, database vs. text searching, natural-language searching, and open-source search engines covering ht://Dig and mnoGoSearch (formerly UdmSearch). The testing included indexing over 150,000 pages, and covered administration tools, customization, search features, relevance ranking and search logs. Products were Ultraseek (then Inktomi Search) (which won Editor's Choice), AltaVista Search, and Excalibur RetrievalWare, services were Atomz Enterprise Search and Searchbutton Corporate, which has since addressed some of the shortcomings reported. Also includes an email poll of Network Computing readers.

• Any Document, Any Place, and a Place for Every Document Software Expert, December 1999 by Ian Westmacott
  Description of the product features and experience of running both Ultraseek and CCE (Content Classification Engine). Definitely recommended.
  
  
• Ultraseek vs. AltaVista Comparison (Draft) Michigan State University, March 11, 1999 by Edward Glowacki
  Report on the advantages of buying a backup AltaVista Search system or switching to Ultraseek. Main advantages for AltaVista are smaller index sizes and installed base: problems include cumbersome upgrades, config files, difficult customization, searching specific campus zones. Ultraseek's advantages are in the browser administration, index mirroring, zone (collection) system, and Content Classification Engine, but the induce size is much larger.
  
  
• Viador Portal Integration September, 1999
  Announcement that the Viador E-Portal Suite can embed Ultraseek Server for both searching and directory classification.
  
  
• Most popular search engines within the enterprise Intranet Journal, November 9, 1998
  Results of an admittedly unscientific survey found intranet webmasters prefer, in order: Ultraseek, Netscape Compass 3, Microsoft Index Server 2, AltaVista Search Intranet, Inmagic/Lycos, Folio Site Director, Magnifi Enterprise 2, ISYS, Phantom and Quadralay WebWorks(tie), with at least one write-in vote for PLS.
  
  
• Infoseek Goes Bilingual Wired News, November 12, 1998 by Chris Oakes
  Article on new release concentrates on the XML searching aspects. Tim Bray, co-editor of the W3C XML standard, welcomed the news cautiously, warning that implementing high-volume and high-performance search of structured text is extremely difficult.
  
  
• Ultraseek wins 1998 Network Computing Well-Connected Award for Intranet Search Engine
  The editors were particularly impressed with the natural language interface, administration and search results.
  
  
• US Department of Education 1997 report on Ultraseek
  The evaluation praises the support, administrative interface, customizability, light resource load, automatic indexing and relevance of results.
  
  
• Internal Search Engines Get You Where You Want To Go TechWeb October 15, 1997 by Barry Nance
  Good, thorough coverage of AltaVista eXtension 97, Folio siteDirector 3.1, Ultraseek 1.1, Inmagic/Lycos, DB/Text Intranet Spider, ISYS:Web 2.0, Maxum Phantom 2.0; Microsoft Index Server 3.0, Netscape Compass 3.0, Quadralay WebWorks Search 2.0, Verity IntelliServe 1.0, freeWAIS 0.3, WebGlimpse 4.0B1 and SWISH 1.1.
  
  
• Buyer's Guide: Search Engines WebServer OnLine, 1997 by Lang Zerner
  Tables for platforms and configuration, indexing, document types, query languages. Covers AltaVista, Fulcrum, Microsoft Index Server, Compass (now from Netscape), PLWeb Turbo, Excalibur, Verity Search '97 and Ultraseek.
  
  
• PC WEEK: Ultraseek spins fast intranet Web searches (PC Week Online, March 10, 1997)
  Description and user quotes.

Examples

• US Department of Education
  
• Motorola Semiconductors Products
• Olympus Corporation - camera and related products (in Japanese)

Partnerships

• Documentum
• Epicentric
• Interwoven
• Livelink
• Netegrity
• Yahoo! Enterprise Portal