Improving the Search Experience in SharePoint
September 12, 2012
Connecting employees to the right information improves workflow. J. Peter Bruzzese discusses the importance of search in his post, “Bring Better Search to SharePoint.” Search challenges are explained:
If only SharePoint’s search capabilities were better. If only users weren’t spending so much time searching for relevant data or the appropriate personnel in the company. If only users weren’t re-creating data they already have ‘somewhere.’ The problems with search have been an absolute failure point for many users of SharePoint 2007. The more they pushed data into SharePoint and grew their farm environment, the more they ran into the wall of search results being less relevant.
In response, Microsoft brought in Fast in hopes to add better results relevance and previews. The author points out that despite Fast, many companies looked to other tools to improve search including BA Insight‘s Longitude Search which attempts to rank content based on user behavior.
Another search solution that may be worth considering is is Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise. Mindbreeze Enterprise Search lets you “be well informed – quickly and accurately. The data often lies distributed across numerous sources. Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise gains each employee two weeks per through focused finding of data (IDC Studies). An invaluable competitive advantage in business as well as providing employee satisfaction.” Boundless data search and clearly structured search results as just two of the solution’s benefits worth taking a second look at.
Philip West, September 12, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext.
Google Results Only Small Percentage of Page View
September 12, 2012
Google has been the reigning king of search since the early 2000s, yet it seems its services are slacking and that may change. According to a blog post on Jitbit titled “Google Search is Only 18% Search,” the actual organic results you immediately see on your screen when you search Google are very few. The blog poster’s example includes a 1280×960 pixel screen, with search results being 535×424 pixels. That’s 18.5% percent of the window.
The article informs us of the shortcomings:
“Let’s count the links – the clickable text UI elements.
The page has about 45 different links in total. Only 5 of them are the actual search results (I do not count the ‘sitelinks’ – the sub-links shown under some results and ADs). Which makes it about 11%. Only 11% of the total links on the page are the actual search results.
(If we do include the ‘sitelinks,’ it makes 57 links, 10 of which are the results, which is 17.6%).”
With real results losing very strongly in area size to advertisements, we wonder how long it will take for avid Google users to become fed up with the ratio. Google became search leader with its relevant and quick results, but with those attributes diminishing, the Goog may flounder in Yahoo form.
Andrea Hayden, September 12, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Alternative Niche Social Networks Expanding and Succeeding
September 12, 2012
Social networking is here to stay. However, it seems the kings of the market, Facebook and Twitter, have some decent competition arising. “Six Alternative Social Networks” on ZeroPaid informs us of alternative social networks that have seen an increase in global market share. Obvious forerunners were Instagram and Pinterest, but other networks are also seeing a boost.
We learn in the article:
“[James Murray, Digital Insights Manager at Experian] also revealed that the future looks bright for alternative social networks, citing technological advancements as a key factor in the increased number of alternative sites:
‘Over the next 12 months, we expect to see a proliferation of niche social networks. Offering deeper functionality combined with a lower technical barrier to entry will mean new leaders in social media being created in a matter of days versus weeks and months.’”
While the numbers for the little guys arising in the social networking arena are nowhere near reaching the gladiators Facebook and Twitter, it is exciting to see where the community is heading. Newcomers are successful when they offer something different and identify a specific niche to reach consumers. No one is going to be the “next Facebook,” but there are still plenty of open opportunities for new networks.
Andrea Hayden, September 12, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Performance Dashboard ROI Calculator from Visual Mining
September 12, 2012
Visual Mining offers a (free) calculator to determine the value of a visual dashboard—see the Business Dashboard ROI Calculator at their site. Naturally, their focus is on their own software, NetCharts Performance Dashboards, but you may be able to extrapolate. The tool’s description reads:
“Reporting and analysis for your business shouldn’t be an arduous undertaking. But many businesses spend 10, 20 or even 40 hours per month assembling financial reports. With performance management dashboards, you don’t have to involve IT or consultants to customize reports, and you don’t need to spend endless hours copying, pasting and assembling data out of spreadsheets or report writers.”
Well, yes, that’s a performance dashboard for you. To use the calculator, you will enter the business’ revenue and an estimate of how many hours currently spent each month producing reports. Then plug in how much you might spend on the software, and the calculator will spit out estimated returns.
Visual Mining has been building data visualization software since 1997. Despite its old-school roots, the company prides itself on keeping up with technology, from supporting the latest browsers and devices to employing advanced chart-rendering methods. Their NetCharts is Web-based, and they also produce tools for developers to build customized, integratable dashboards. The company is headquartered in Rockville, Maryland.
Cynthia Murrell, September 12, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
VoltDB and Actuate Unite
September 12, 2012
Combine the high speed processing of VoltDB with analysis capabilities of ActuateOne, and you get a fast and flexible solution that no business will be able to do without. At least, that’s the hope behind a new pairing described in 4-Traders’ “Actuate Corporation: Actuate and VoltDB Team to Speed Processing of Big Data and Deliver Faster Insights.” The announcement was made at last month’s NoSQL Now! Conference. The write up explains:
“Organizations across a wide range of industries – including finance, digital advertising, mobile/telecom and online gaming – that have extreme needs for fast, real-time data processing will benefit from being able to quickly analyze data that is processed in milliseconds. Specialty applications for the combined solutions include fraud detection, high-velocity trade order processing, digital ad exchanges, and micro-transaction systems.”
The hybrid product promises such boons as low latency with guaranteed accuracy, scaling for large active datasets, operational and analytic dashboards, and the ability to combine real-time and historical data sources.
Launched in 1993, Actuate is headquartered in San Mateo, California. Because the company founded and co-leads the Eclipse BIRT (Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools) open source project, its NASDAQ symbol is BIRT. Its ActuateOne platform is built around this project.
VoltDB was founded specifically to serve companies that require ultra-high database throughput and real-time analytics. Their NewSQL database is an in-memory, relational SQL database. The company makes its home in Billerica, Massachusetts.
Cynthia Murrell, September 12, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
More on Marketing Confusion in Big Data Analytics
September 11, 2012
Search vendors are like a squirrel dodging traffic. Some make it across the road safely. Others? Well, there is a squirrel heaven I assume. Which search vendors will survive the speeding tractor trailers carrying big data, analytics, and visualization to customers who are famished for systems which make sense of information? I don’t know. No one really knows.
Do squirrels understand high speed, high volume traffic? A happy quack to http://surykatki.blox.pl/html/1310721,262146,14,15.html?7,2007 for a fierce squirrel image.
What is fascinating is to watch the Darwinian process at work among vendors of search and content processing. TextRadar’s “Content Intelligence: An Unexpected Collision Is Coming” makes clear that there are quite a few companies not widely known in the financial and health care markets. Some of these companies have opportunities to make the leap from government contract work to commercial work for Fortune 1000 companies.
But what about more traditional search vendors?
I received in the snail mail a copy of Oracle Magazine. September October 2012. The article which caught my attention was “New Questions, Fast Answers.” The information was in the form of an interview between Rich Schwerin, an Oracle magazine writer, and Paul Sonderegger, senior director of analytics at Oracle. Mr. Sonderegger was the chief strategist at Endeca, which is now part of the Oracle family of companies.
I have followed Endeca since I first learned about the company in 1999, 22 years ago. Like many traditional search vendors, the underlying technical concepts of Endeca date from the salad days of key word search. Endeca’s innovation was to identify concepts either human-assigned or generated by software to group related information. The idea was that a user could run a query and then click on concepts to “discover” information not in the explicit key word match. Endeca dubbed the function “guided navigation” and applied the approach to eCommerce as well as search across the type of information found in a company. The core of the technology was the “Endeca MDEX” engine. At the time of Endeca’s market entrance, there were only a handful of companies competing for enterprise search and eCommerce. In the last two decades the field has narrowed in one sense with the big name companies acquired by larger firms and broadened in another. There are hundreds of vendors offering search, but the majority of these companies use different words to describe indexing and search.
One Endeca executive (Peter Bell) told me in 2005 that the company had been growing at 100 percent each year since 2002.” At the time of the Oracle buy out, I estimated that Endeca had hit about $150 million in revenues. Oracle paid about $1.1 billion for the company or what, if I am accurate, amounts to about 10 times annual revenues. Endeca was a relative bargain compared to Hewlett Packard’s purchase of Autonomy for $10 billion. Autonomy, founded a few years before Endeca, had reached about $850 million in annual revenues, so the multiple on revenues was greater than the Endeca deal. The point is that both of these search giants ranked one and two in enterprise search revenues. Both companies emphasized their technologies’ ability to handle structured and unstructured information. Both Autonomy and Endeca offered business intelligence solutions. In short, both companies had capabilities which some of the newcomers mentioned in the Text Radar article are now touting as fresh and innovative. One key point: It took 22 years for Endeca to hit $150 million and now Oracle has to generate more revenue from the aging Endeca technology. HP has the same challenge with Autonomy, of course. Revenue generation, in my opinion, has been time consuming and difficult. Of the hundreds of vendors past and present, only two have broken the $150 million in revenue barrier. Google and Microsoft would be quick to point out that their search systems are far larger, but these are special cases because it is difficult to unwrap search revenues from other revenue streams.
What does Mr. Sonderegger say in this Oracle Magazine interview. Let me highlight three points and urge you to read the full text of his remarks.
Easy Access
First, business users do not know how to write queries, so “guided navigation” services are needed. Mr. Sonderegger noted:
There has to be some easy way to explore, some way to search and navigate as easily as you do on an e-commerce site.
Most of the current vendors of analytics and findability systems seem to have made the leap from point-and-click to snazzy visualizations. The Endeca angle is that users want to discover and navigate. The companies referenced in the Text Radar story want to make the experience visual, almost video-game like.
Tips Are Not Enough for a Killer SharePoint Search System
September 11, 2012
We read “5 Tips for Turning a SharePoint 2010 Search Center into a Find Center.” The points are useful and include such suggestions as appointing a search administrator, have a SharePoint Search plan, and monitor the search system.
We found this passage interesting:
The default Search Center above might be enough for some sites (hey, the minimalist approach works for Google), but with some work, you can turn this into a Search Center that is useful enough for users to set it as their home page. You can get a lot of good ideas from the white paper How Microsoft IT Deployed FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint, especially the Enterprise search center article. This screenshot from the white paper provides an example of what you can do with your Search Center. FAST Search Server will give you a richer experience on the search results page, but the items you see on this Search Center are achievable with SharePoint 2010—or even SharePoint 2007. To create a Search Center that is the go-to place for your users, you can add helpful information such as links to event calendars, corporate news, campus maps, benefits, expense reporting, and research portals.
In our experience, SharePoint Search can deliver high-value services to users throughout an organization. SharePoint, particularly with its distributed and cloud capabilities, can now provide exceptional information access across a wide range of on premises and remote worker use cases.
However, only a handful of consulting services firm have the technical expertise and hands-on experience necessary to deploy a SharePoint solution in a matter of days. Search Technologies has implemented hundreds of SharePoint Search solutions, and the firm’s technical staff knows how to move through a project from its inception to its customization and optimization in an efficient manner.
If you want to move SharePoint to the next level, consider Search Technologies.
Iain Fletcher, September 11, 2012
Sponsored by Augmentext
xx
Enhance a Public Facing Site with Fabasoft Mindbreeze InSite
September 11, 2012
A public facing Web site is a digital business card and often the first way potential customers meet your company or organization. Messe München International (MMI) realized the opportunity in powerful site search and so employed the Fabasoft Mindbreeze InSite solution. Patrick Kapfer discusses the MMI decision in the post, “Global Trade Show Organizer Opts for Mindbreeze InSite.”
Kapfer explains,
The product stands out with its intuitive, user friendly search. As a Cloud service it’s ready to use straight away! Further advantages lie in the fact that it’s more than just a search. Fabasoft Mindbreeze InSite recognizes connections using semantic and dynamic search procedures. In this way it delivers a pinpoint accurate ‘finding experience.’ No installation, no configuration, no maintenance. What more could a company wish for?
Consider taking advantage of the no obligation 14 day free trial InSite demo and test the enhanced finding experience for your Web site. As the Messe München International (MMI) attests the fast search and clear results make Insite a viable search option for customers seeking functionality and ease of use. Other customer comments can be found online if you are seeking additional testimonials about the capabilities of Mindbreeze. The search service “runs on high performance servers in the Cloud and can be up and running in a few days. There’s nothing to install – Mindbreeze InSite is available straight away via our self-service.”
Philip West, September 11, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext.
Funnel Analytics from Woopra
September 11, 2012
Here’s a spin on data analysis: the funnel insight approach. In a recent blog post, Woopra announces “Deeper Conversion Insight with New Funnel Analytics.” The tool is designed to let retailers determine the point(s) at which visitors leave their site without purchasing anything. It is then, of course, up to the client to figure out how to entice potential customers beyond that point. The post tells us:
“While in the previous version a funnel had to be completed in one visit, the new Funnel Analytics can now run reports over multiple visits. This means that you can now study longer term funnels, such as those that take weeks or months to be completed.
“For example, a website visitor may complete step 1 of your funnel on her first visit to your website, but not complete the last step until 3 months later. You can now analyze this longer term behavior for more complete insight.”
Another improvement is the ability to compare segments of a site’s users, including custom segments. The software can also determine the average time and number of visits between each step of a user’s experience.
Located in San Francisco, CA, Woopra launched in 2008. Early on the real-time analytics scene, the company strives to stay on the leading edge of the customer engagement platform field.
Cynthia Murrell, September 11, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Sail Labs Improves Its English
September 11, 2012
The English Language has received an upgrade. Well, within the field of speech technology solutions, anyway. Sail Labs crows, “Sail Labs Technology Unveils New English Language Feature.” The company has just improved the International English capability within their Media Mining System.
Sail Labs creates products that harvest and process data from a wealth of sources—TV, radio, e-documents, and, of course, the Web in all its glory. The company’s Gerhard Backfried, Sail Lab’s head of research, emphasizes the importance of getting English right:
“English is the dominant and in some cases even the legally required international language in a multitude of economies, professions and industries such as aerial and maritime communications and for international organizations like the United Nations. . . . Keeping the International English language feature up-to-date is of utmost importance to us and reflects the significance of English as a key language for IT, media and communication. This latest update forms part of our continuous effort to keep language features, vocabularies and language models up-to-date to cope with language change and presents improvements in many dimensions.”
Such updating, the press release notes, empowers their software to process words and phrases common in current media. Sail Labs, whose breezy name stands for Speech, Artificial Intelligence, and Language Labs, was formed in 1999. The company is proudly located in Vienna, Austria.
Cynthia Murrell, September 11, 2012
Sponsored by target=”_blank”ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
