This UK-based construction company needed to search the intranet beyond their CMS content. Installing the GSA provided this functionality, users noticed the improved search immediately, and the HR department reports reduced calls to the support department by 25% (5 per day).
Short case study of GSAs at the Canadian Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. They use two search appliances (one for internal documents, the other external), looking for simplicity and Google's relevance ranking. The GSA compares favorably to previous search engines in both quality and configuration -- having a separate appliance avoids competition for server resources. The search administrator had some installation glitches, wishes for automated email reporting, but likes the speed, easy maintenance, and reduction in negative feedback on search make it a success.
Covers setup, features, upgrading from 2.0, and general recommendations.
Informative review mentions version 2.0 features, and describes problems with indexing Windows network shares, unlimited collections, facilities to set crawl frequency on specific sections, limitations of synonyms, results customization, and network file security issues. Verdict is positive, prices in UK pounds.
Describes how FirstGov has switched from a FAST implementation by IBM to a combination of MSN Search and Vivisimo Search and Clustering, which now brings back results from local jurisdictions as well as the federal government. The administrator in charge likes the clustered category links. Mentions Google Search Appliance market share, and Autonomy's powerful but complex features. One search administrator points out the need to invest resources to make best use of search systems.
Describes installing and configuring a Google Mini Appliance, and the functions offered by the appliance. Mainly describes the features, with a note about how loud the blue pizza-box hardware was.
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.
The City of San Diego was unhappy with their search engine, an old version of Verity bundled with another program. Instead of a costly upgrade to Verity K2, the city chose to install the Google Search Appliance, to great appreciation from employees and citizens. It also indexes Documentum, Sun One and database applications, improving access and simplifying tasks. The article is slightly misleading, the Verity application was not an appliance, and the Google Search Appliance crawls the application data via their Web interfaces, which is not explained in the article.
CareerBuilder, a recruitment and job-finding service, was limited by its original search engine, Microsoft Index Server. After assessing a number of search engines, including the Google Search Appliance, they choose Fast Data Search, mainly so they could adjust search results and provide pay-for-position services. The speed of the FAST search engine, up to 140 searches per second, and near-real-time index updates were other considerations in the choice.
Search
On Information Week, January 20, 2003 by Tony Kontzer
Discusses the need for useful search engines in corporate intranets. Describes experiences in Ford's Learning Network using Autonomy; Bank One and Kaiser Permanente using the Google Search Appliance for simplicity, low cost and speed; KMPG UK's use of Verity K2 for sophisticated taxonomy and social networking; Gateway's implementation of iPhrase for support technicians; and EDS using Recommind for role-related search results.
Discusses the need for useful search engines in corporate intranets. Describes experiences in Ford's Learning Network using Autonomy; Bank One and Kaiser Permanente using the Google Search Appliance for simplicity, low cost and speed; KMPG UK's use of Verity K2 for sophisticated taxonomy and social networking; Gateway's implementation of iPhrase for support technicians; and EDS using Recommind for role-related search results.
Google
Takes Aim At The Enterprise InternetWeek.com, June 18 2002, by Richard
Karpinski
Reports from Google Search Appliance users -- National Semiconductor says it's easy to deploy and end-users are predisposed to like it. Sur La Table says the Google product was significantly cheaper than other similar search engines, and delivers results in XML for programmatic processing using open standards.
Reports from Google Search Appliance users -- National Semiconductor says it's easy to deploy and end-users are predisposed to like it. Sur La Table says the Google product was significantly cheaper than other similar search engines, and delivers results in XML for programmatic processing using open standards.
Updated review with new features.
Detailed review of the features of the search engine with screenshots, covering robot crawling, indexing features, search features, results customizing and reports. Conclusion: This is an excellent search engine for HTTP-accessible content, with comprehensive administration tools, wonderful reports, familiar search features and powerful customization options. However, it doesn't have the significant advantages over the competition that the public Google search does: relevance ranking is similar to other high-quality search engines. If you want more control over crawling schedules or relevance weighting, or you need to integrate with enterprise security systems, textual databases, content or document management systems, this version can't accommodate you. But it's effective, fast and particularly well-priced for Intranets or web sites with millions of documents.
Describes several new features of site search including better relevance as pioneered by the public Google search engine and the Google Search Appliance (does not cover whether it works in controlled link environments), improved forgiveness to handle misspellings and mismatched vocabularies as implemented by Netrics, automated intelligence - classification and categorization engines such as Autonomy and the new ClearForest, and creative pricing, mentioning EasyAsk, which in one installation, received a percentage of increased revenue. Describes the market difficulties including the high number of vendors and shrinking corporate site budgets.
Describes the Google Search Appliance features, including competitive pricing and "appealing" features for searching common document formats. Points out some problems with access to databases, security and access control, and PageRank limitations in the structured design of business sites and intranets. Also mentions difficulty integrating with business intelligence and customer relationship management applications.