Speaking your users’ language with the Google Search Appliance
– posted October 25th, 2006 by Laurence Veale No comments
Ever searched for bar and then bars and seen dramatically different results? What about bars versus pubs?
It’s a real problem with search. How do you get your search engine to speak the same language as all your visitors? Generally not an easy thing to do until the Google Search Appliance came along.
Fresh from the Google Enterprise blog is their latest Tech Tip, Flexible Query Expansion Policies. A bit of a mouthful but what does this mean in practical terms?
Stemming
Words from the same stem i.e. bar and bars are essentially treated as the same word. The Google Search Appliance performs what’s termed “query expansion” so whatever word is searched for, the results are still relevant.
Synonyms
Synonyms (words the same meaning as other words) used to be a real thorny issue. In fact, this issue is often what trips up a good navigation or information architecture (Dave Moore discussed it recently in his article, Good sites need good writing and I previously blogged on navigation versus search). It’s often the case that an organisation’s internal jargon spills out on to their website and it’s an exercise in telepathy trying to figure out the difference between what the organisation and the visitors are thinking. It’s also the difference between a fruitless search and a user that’s happy as Larry
Synonyms are really easy to set up, you can use the Google Search Appliance default synonym dictionary which is quite comprehensive in addition to uploading your own through the Admin console.
Synonyms in action
Being current, I’ll use Trinity College Dublin as an example as they recently launched their new Google Search Appliance.
Take their computer science course. They’ve labeled it “computer science”, but what about a recent school leaver who thinks she wants to study “an IT course” or “Information Technology”. How do you reconcile the differences? In navigation labels, it can be tough, but not so with search.
Using the GSA’s synonym features you can provide a really flexible search experience, in anyone’s terms. And that, I hope, explains Flexible Query Expansion.
Read the full post on Google’s Enterprise blog
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Categories Enterprise Search
