Comments on: Google Search Appliance Woos, But Does It Wow? http://thenoisychannel.com/2009/06/03/google-search-appliance-woos-but-does-it-wow/ Wed, 17 Mar 2010 11:17:41 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Steve http://thenoisychannel.com/2009/06/03/google-search-appliance-woos-but-does-it-wow/comment-page-1/#comment-4864 Steve Fri, 13 Nov 2009 05:26:32 +0000 http://thenoisychannel.com/?p=2171#comment-4864 Having managed GSAs since 2003 on our university campus I can say without a doubt that our users expect the GSA to perform exactly like the web search big brother. Jeremy's statement that PageRank is missing from the GSA is enlightening and frightening at the same time. I'll have to do some additional research on this as it will finally answer some questions I've had. When Google upgraded from the 3.x software to the 4.x software (2007?), something went drastically wrong and enterprise search results haven't been up to par since. Having managed GSAs since 2003 on our university campus I can say without a doubt that our users expect the GSA to perform exactly like the web search big brother. Jeremy’s statement that PageRank is missing from the GSA is enlightening and frightening at the same time. I’ll have to do some additional research on this as it will finally answer some questions I’ve had. When Google upgraded from the 3.x software to the 4.x software (2007?), something went drastically wrong and enterprise search results haven’t been up to par since.

]]> By: jeremy http://thenoisychannel.com/2009/06/03/google-search-appliance-woos-but-does-it-wow/comment-page-1/#comment-3742 jeremy Wed, 03 Jun 2009 18:46:20 +0000 http://thenoisychannel.com/?p=2171#comment-3742 <i>There is still a widespread impression that Google is not serious about this market segment.</i> My impression is not so much that they're not serious -- because I think they are -- as they are perhaps a little.. how shall I say.. single-minded or narrowly constructive in what they believe constitutes a good solution to the problem. They have, and have explicitly expressed, this genuine belief that enterprise search should work exactly like web search (i.e. search as nothing more than known-item, one-box lookup). I've heard them state this in their promotional materials. I've heard them make this claim at the Office 2.0 conferences that I've been to, and at the AIIM conference as well. Ironically, the thing that made Google web search so much better than all the others back in 1998 at the known-item/lookup task is the very thing that is not available in an Enterprise context (PageRank). So right off the bat that should be a clue that Enterprise search should not really be the same as web search. And when I talked 1-on-1 at the AIIM conference with the head of Google's Enterprise division about the relationship between web-style precision search, and PageRank-less Enterprise search, he didn't have any good answer ("We use hundreds of features to determine relevance..") He just repeated the mantra that office users want search to perform exactly the same way that web search performs. That's the "googly" way, the "googly" philosophy. I just don't know if it's true. There is still a widespread impression that Google is not serious about this market segment.

My impression is not so much that they’re not serious — because I think they are — as they are perhaps a little.. how shall I say.. single-minded or narrowly constructive in what they believe constitutes a good solution to the problem. They have, and have explicitly expressed, this genuine belief that enterprise search should work exactly like web search (i.e. search as nothing more than known-item, one-box lookup). I’ve heard them state this in their promotional materials. I’ve heard them make this claim at the Office 2.0 conferences that I’ve been to, and at the AIIM conference as well.

Ironically, the thing that made Google web search so much better than all the others back in 1998 at the known-item/lookup task is the very thing that is not available in an Enterprise context (PageRank). So right off the bat that should be a clue that Enterprise search should not really be the same as web search. And when I talked 1-on-1 at the AIIM conference with the head of Google’s Enterprise division about the relationship between web-style precision search, and PageRank-less Enterprise search, he didn’t have any good answer (“We use hundreds of features to determine relevance..”)

He just repeated the mantra that office users want search to perform exactly the same way that web search performs.

That’s the “googly” way, the “googly” philosophy.

I just don’t know if it’s true.

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