A discussion of the FAST search engine which is now part of SharePoint Portal Server. We explore the business opportunities in both employee-facing and customer-facing scenarios and discuss the differences in the technology from the perspective of readers that are already familiar with SharePoint.
I am excited and fascinated by the evolution of search.
Since my first introduction to interactive consulting back in 2000, I have spent most of my time working with clients on their public facing websites. I must admit, I had come to think about search almost exclusively from the perspective of SEO and SEM. To me, and many of my industry peers, site search was really an afterthought. Sure, the site needed a search box, just as it needed other website staples: Main nav, sub nav, links to Contact Us, Home, French and on and on..
But really - who were we kidding? Beyond dropping in the Google Mini or something similar, there wasn't a whole lot of time invested in the site search. Why would there be? With strong IA, compelling creative and useful features and functionality, users would have a great experience and would interact with the site according to our carefully conceived plan!
Times have changed.
We used to think about Web Strategy as a means to answer two core challenges:
There was the Search Strategy to answer number 1: Based on the concept of "If you build it, they will not necessarily come" - the search strategy focused on tactics like SEO, SEM and paid placements (banner ads, editorial content, online PR etc.) designed to drive traffic to the site.
Website Strategy addressed question number 2: Website strategy assumed that the search strategy was essentially completed once the user arrived at the site. Thus the responsibility of the website strategy was to keep users engaged and give them compelling reasons to return. This is where the importance of strong usability, inuitive navigation, quality content and designing for the target audience becomes critical.
Of course all of this is still important, but now there is a third consideration: Search As A Strategy.
The pervasiveness of "Just Google it" has created a reflex tendency amongst most of us to initate our web session at the search engine; punching key words in a frantic and hurried effort to retrieve the most accurate information in the shortest possible timeframe. Blame a shortened attention span, hectic work day, limited patience - whatever. That fact is, we have come to expect information, served up and to our liking, without delay. The novelty of hunt, explore and navigate is long gone, and with that a revelation:
Like it or not, we can influence user behaviour, but we cannot control it.
What does this mean? Despite our grandest efforts to position information and site features in the manner most conducive to an optimal user experience, if the site search cannot answer a user's query in a split second, in a split second the user is gone. There he goes, back to the search engine to try again. Why? Because your site did not have the information he was looking for. Even if it did, perception is everything, and in this user's mind, what could not be found does not exist.
Something to think about.
In this blog, I will be rambling on about the changing landscape of enterprise search and the rise of information access technology on the internet. Search as a strategy. Getting the user to your site is not enough. Not anymore.
We’ve talked in earlier posts about search-as-a-strategy instead of as-a-feature. In the feature