Faceted Search: From the 1990s to Forever and Ever
January 4, 2015
Keyword retrieval is useful. But it is not good for some tasks. In the mid 1990s, Endeca’s founders “invented” a better way. The name that will get you a letter from a lawyer is “guided navigation.” The patents make clear the computational procedure required to make facets work.
The more general name of the feature is “faceted navigation.” For those struggling with indexing, faceted navigation “exposes” the users to content options. This works well if the domain is reasonably stable, the corpus small, and the user knows generally what he or she needs.
To get a useful review of this approach to findability, check out “Faceted Navigation.” Now five years old, the write up will add logs to the fires of taxonomy. However, faceted search is not next generation information access. Faceted navigation is like a flintlock rifle used by Lewis and Clark. Just don’t try to kill any Big Data bears with the method. And Twitter outputs? Look elsewhere.
Stephen E Arnold, January 4, 2014
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