Step Two Designs

The strength of enterprise search is also its challenge: how to pick which of the many features to use?

Can we replace our intranet homepages with a Google-inspired search page?

In most cases, the intranet team should own search, and the responsibility should not be left within IT.

Search doesn’t work out of the box, and up to 80% of the default functionality must be stripped out for general search users.

Driving enterprise search to cover ever more content does not necessarily deliver better results.

Out-of-the-box, search doesn’t work, and there is a small (but vital) piece of work needed to design and tune the search solution.

This article outlines nine steps that can be taken by all intranet teams to improve the effectiveness of search, covering both design and under-the-hood changes.

How good are the search capabilities built into CMS products, and when should you make use of them?

At the most fundamental level, search should work like magic: it should always give staff the information they need, even if they only enter a word (or two).

Beyond just helping staff to ‘find stuff’, search can play a valuable role in meeting broader knowledge management goals.

Search engine ‘best bets’ can dramatically improve the search experience, particularly on information-rich sites such as intranets.

Much can be done to simplify search results pages, to make them easier to use for all staff to use.

AGIMO Better Practice Checklist, outlining a number of issues should be considered when designing and implementing search facilities.

Search engine reports are one of the most effective tools for gathering user information and improving an intranet.

A case study describing how to deliver a successful searching solution. Provides guidelines on user interface design, indexing configuration, search engine weightings and more.