Why Intranet and Enterprise Search is not like Google
Volker Grünauer
Advatera: Knowledge Sharing for Digital Leaders – Collaborative Groups for Comms, Marketing & Digital Managers – 17 years of facilitating engaging member workshops in AT, BE, CH, DE, FR, NL, UK
Ellen van Aken recently wrote a blog post about why enterprise search is not like Google. You can read it here.
Ellen came up with some very good reasons why internal search engines don't match up with the expectations employees have. I want to add one very simple reason which I believe can be good explanation for employees asking for a Google alike search experience on Intranets.
There are two main search patterns:
- first pattern search
- known item search
First pattern means, you are happy with any search result that gives you a good answer. For example: searching for a recipe with having specific ingredients in mind. The first result shown in Google which is a good match with the ingredients you have in mind, is a good result for you. There might be thousands of good results.
Known item search means, you are looking for that one exact document or information and of course the actual version of it. So with the recipe example it would mean: you are looking for that one recipe how your grandmother always made the dish. You won’t find it in Google easily (even if your grandmother would have put it online somewhere).
You use Google a lot for first pattern searches whereas Intranet search is way more often used for that one single truth type of information. So Intranet search is more often a known item search.
Actually I’d guess about 70% of searches inside the organization are known item searchs whereas maybe maximum 30% in web search are that pattern. Of course, every search engine has much more troubles finding the single truth information rather coming up with thousands of somehow alike documents.
Maybe that helps understanding why intranet or enterprise search is often rated bad in comparsion to web search.
How do you optimize your intranet search? Feel free to post your comments at Ellen's blog post or here.
Volker is founder of Advatera, a network for digital and communication managers. Take advantage of your peers' expertise and share your experience in one of our expert group meetings.
Senior Key Expert on Knowledge Management and Enterprise Social Software at Siemens AG - polymath a-head of mainstream
10 年Well, known item search ist not the same thing as the assumed single point of truth. While I fully support your and Ellen's hints about the differences between internet and (most) intranets I would also challenge the idea of single truth, need to know etc. I know, it feels stable and secure ;-)
RETIRED Corporate Communications Specialist (intranet, internal & external community manager)
10 年One more difference between first pattern search (internet) and known item search (intranet) is the tagging. Whereas for the external commercial site, companies hire experts to tag content to make it show at the top of Google search results, tagging content on the intranet is rarely a priority.
Driving data-centric innovation in the Pharmaceutical Industry.
10 年This article is a concise explanation of why pattern and probabilistic search is not the best fit for the Enterprise - a must read for the managers who make statements like "We need 'Google-like' search".
Senior Manager at Deloitte
10 年Youre so right. Some years ago I made the error the explain Enterprise Search with "a search like GOOGLE" - never did tha again. They are not to compare.