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 some of the specific demands of government business processes, and how some features such as video search are being incorporated into enterprise search by companies like FAST. Divides search into four categories: departmental; general-purpose enterprise search; customizable specialized search; and document management systems with search. Describes federated search from OpenText and Documentum, Vivisimo as well as Google's Search Appliance OneBox technology. In contrast, EasyAsk emphasizes multiple query and navigation depending on the data. The article also describes the value of entity extraction and taxonomy to improve search results.
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.
Long analysis of the newly-named Unstructured Information Management sector, which includes sophisticated search, categorization and visualization tools. Case studies include medical and patent research. Describes text analysis processes for information discovery, including rules-based vs. machine learning techniques, used for assigning documents to taxonomic categories and generating searchable metadata.
- Report analyzes 40 vendors, using the criteria of Search & Retrieval, Information Extraction, Categorization, Clustering, Taxonomy Management, Visualization, Other Apps, Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute.
- Highest scores to Autonomy and Verity in the search market, Stratify, nStein and Inxight in categorization, Kartoo and Antarctica in visualization.
- Vendors covered: 80-20, APR
(SmartLogik), ClearForest,
Convera, Endeca,
Endymion, Entrieva, FAST,
Google Search Appliance, Hapax,
IBM, Insightful, Intelligenxia, Intelliseek,
Inxight, Jeeves
Solutions, Kartoo, LingoMotors, Megaputuer, Microsoft,
Mohomine, Nstein, Open Text, Oracle,
Readware, Semagix, SER, Speed of Mind, SPSS, SRA, Stratify, Temis Group,
Teragram, Text Analysis International, Triplehop, Verity,
Vivisimo.
Discusses new approaches to site search, surveys search technologies with sample vendors. Describes the SinglePoint approach, which uses classification, term frequency, inverse database frequency, length, timeliness, keyword prominence and positioning, and ways for users to disambiguate queries. iPhrase and InQuira offer natural-language processing of search queries, although it's difficult to get users to enter full sentences. Mentions VIMA's image-recognition software, search engine optimization techniques and email search.
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.
Searching for Order Government Executive Magazine, January 15, 2003
by Karen D. Schwartz
Government agencies have significant information needs, especially intelligence analysts investigating possible attacks. Article covers both simple and complex search and retrieval approaches. The US Defense Technical Information Center uses software from Thunderstone, Convera and Verity K2, which has personalization features designed predict what users will ned based on previous searches. These retrieval engines often integrate with security systems. Alternately, some US military and intelligence organizations use web-like search engine software, including the Google Search Appliance, which can index external sites. Tim Hoechst of Oracle recommends CMS for internal core documents and a secondary search engine for additional content. This may address the problems with finding data in various repositories within an agency, and across agencies. The US State Department is using Convera RetrievalWare to provide a single point of access to a distributed system. Describes the GLIS (Government Information Locator Services) standard for databases and searching, which provides metadata and standardization.
Government agencies have significant information needs, especially intelligence analysts investigating possible attacks. Article covers both simple and complex search and retrieval approaches. The US Defense Technical Information Center uses software from Thunderstone, Convera and Verity K2, which has personalization features designed predict what users will ned based on previous searches. These retrieval engines often integrate with security systems. Alternately, some US military and intelligence organizations use web-like search engine software, including the Google Search Appliance, which can index external sites. Tim Hoechst of Oracle recommends CMS for internal core documents and a secondary search engine for additional content. This may address the problems with finding data in various repositories within an agency, and across agencies. The US State Department is using Convera RetrievalWare to provide a single point of access to a distributed system. Describes the GLIS (Government Information Locator Services) standard for databases and searching, which provides metadata and standardization.
Evaluating
25 E-Commerce Search Engines $99 from 37Signals , January 2003
Research firm performed systematic evaluation on searching online stores. Criteria were accuracy and relevance for simple searches, handling misspellings, responding to "mixed" specifications (such as color, size and material in the same search), automatically expanding to synonyms and related terms, providing options for sorting and filtering results, and handling failed searches where no matches were found. They found that 92% of the commerce sites (including Lands' End, Amazon, Wine.com, QVC and the Apple Store) found relevant results for standard searches, but most had significant problems with the other tests. Includes detailed analysis and screenshots of the results, and rating for each site.
Research firm performed systematic evaluation on searching online stores. Criteria were accuracy and relevance for simple searches, handling misspellings, responding to "mixed" specifications (such as color, size and material in the same search), automatically expanding to synonyms and related terms, providing options for sorting and filtering results, and handling failed searches where no matches were found. They found that 92% of the commerce sites (including Lands' End, Amazon, Wine.com, QVC and the Apple Store) found relevant results for standard searches, but most had significant problems with the other tests. Includes detailed analysis and screenshots of the results, and rating for each site.
I
still haven't found what I'm looking for... Search engine technology works
both ways Newspapers & Technology, December 2002 by Hays Goodman
Describes webwide search engine submission issues, and site search tool for news sites. Examples are Atomz at Cincinnati.com, which replaced Netscape and Excite search engines, and was so successful that it is now being used at many of the Gannett newspaper sites. The Deseret News has used Convera RetrievalWare since 1998, apparently on both internal and public sites.
Describes webwide search engine submission issues, and site search tool for news sites. Examples are Atomz at Cincinnati.com, which replaced Netscape and Excite search engines, and was so successful that it is now being used at many of the Gannett newspaper sites. The Deseret News has used Convera RetrievalWare since 1998, apparently on both internal and public sites.
Describes the huge amounts of unstructured data in enterprise computer networks, wasted time re-creating this information, and the lack of tools equivalent to data mining, business intelligence and OLAP. Identifies four application sectors: content, document and knowledge management; search and retrieval; categorization, taxonomy and data visualization; XML databases. They evaluate these sectors from a business perspective, defining strengths, trends and leading vendors. Point out that the Web expanded the size of the search market but did not sustain it, while the categorization market is volatile, with many small and recently-acquired companies. Analysts believe that the leading relational database vendors (IBM, Oracle and Microsoft) may be able to lead the unstructured data market as well. Describes Verity K2 as an integrated search and taxonomy system, preferred over Autonomy, which is a "Rolls Royce" company in knowledge management and collaboration, and Ultraseek (Inktomi Enterprise Search), even with the Quiver taxonomy engine. In Categorization and Visualization, they feel that InXight is the best among the field including Antarctica, Applied Semantics, ClearForest, IBM Lotus Discovery, Mohomine, Entrieva (Semio), Stratify and The Brain.
Analysis of the search market starts with the insight that search is ubiquitous, but can never come up to user expectations. As a business, search has become a commodity, so search engine vendors are trying to both improve algorithms and show the meaningful value to customers. Describes various taxonomy and clustering techniques, strategies to make search better such as personalization, examples, taxonomies, and browsing results. Compares manual editing, mainly for categorization and taxonomies, to automatic processes. Predicts that vendors will extend search to related topics such as contextual advertising, business intelligence and domain name suggestions. Highlights innovative search engine approaches including Albert natural-language search, ClearForest entity extraction, and solution providers Autonomy comprehensive information management, Applied Semantics ontology and automated classification, and DreMedia video indexing.
Considering the issue of search engines for finding information, this report attributes the main factors driving growth in the market to significant increases in the amount and variety of content (now including multimedia, metadata and structured data), and to the number and variety of users of search engines. Describes the process of gathering data and converting formats for indexing, including structural and semantic analysis. Summarizes query processing, retrieval, relevance ranking, and metasearch (federated search). Provides a table based on content type and sophistication of search algorithm, and marks the general capabilities of 32 search engines and taxonomy categorization tools. Refers to the "principal of least surprise" to recommend predictable software over products which may be spectacular but unreliable. Recommends that purchasers test search engines with real data and understand the weaknesses of the software.
Defines the increasing need for tools to organize information and avoid overload, especially with ambiguous words. Covers the evolution of technologies from simple to more complex search engines with extreme recall, metadata search, link ranking, and taxonomy-creation software for hierarchical structures. Describes how people find information, both for known item searches and for discovery about a topic, where arrangements of subject categories trigger associations and relationships. Interactive and iterative browsing within categories helps locate dynamic data which otherwise might be hard to find. Searching within categories or zones helps avoid false matches. Taxonomies can integrate with internal applications such as proposal-generation, CRM and data mining. Provides a useful checklist for analyzing taxonomy tools. Survey results of 450 executives, IT or managers at large enterprise organizations with at least 50,000 documents shows: most spend more than 2 hours per day searching for information, 73% say that finding information is difficult, the main impediments were "bad tools" (28%) and "data changes" (35%). Describes the principals of automatic classification and taxonomy-building, with details on eleven products. NOTE: vendors paid Delphi to be included in this report.
Discusses online store search engines: Mercado, EasyAsk, Endeca, and Netrics, referring to the 2001 Forrester report. Describes customer needs for technology that allows both searching and browsing by category or product attribute. Includes evidence of the good results at Tower Records with Endeca, but finds few examples of faceted metadata usage. Includes additional references to studies of e-commerce search engine demands and limits, suggesting significant changes from the traditional "relevance ranking" approach. Changes include recognizing the problems of a long search result, redirecting searches for brands or products not carried to similar available products, sorting and drilling down on product attributes, spelling correction and synonyms.