How to: 5 Steps to Optimize your Enterprise or Intranet Search Engine

Years ago, I have written already about why Intranet search is not like Google search and can never be like it. In short: intranet search queries are often looking for a very specific answer, an exact match, whereas web search often is just a best match. If you are looking for a recipe, you will find thousands in Google and some matching ones on the first page. But if you are looking for a specific document, the Google search is not always perfect.

"A broad answer is sufficient for 70% of searches on the web, whereas 70% of searches on the intranet are looking for concrete answers. The one information in the currently valid version where you know it exists, but you don't know where – this information is much harder to find, no matter how good your technology is."

But there is also another important reason why intranet searches have not improved in many companies over the years. In every website project today there is a professional search engine optimization. Resources that ensure that the source code and server is technically optimized and that the content is written in a search engine friendly manner. By the way, well structured and optimized content is also important for future technologies like chat bots. The better the content they get, the better their answers will be.

5 Steps to Optimize your Internal Search Engine

• Create resources in your team for ongoing search engine optimization, and if it's only a few hours a month, it's better than nothing.
• Ensure that search engine optimization experts are involved in the technical project team to validate the source code and server installation regarding search engine optimization. Often you might not have the right people with that specific expertise in your organization, so you might look for an external consultant. If so, always take independence into account and never take a consultant from the same firm that is already responsible for your intranet implementation.
• Train all editors also for search engine optimization.
• When searching internally, you have the huge advantage that you can influence the search algorithm. Go through the most important search queries every month and make sure you get the right result. If not, manually optimize the search algorithm. Also Google has hundreds if not thousands of employees working on better algorithms. Of course, you can't touch the search algorithm as deeply as Google, but every internal search engine nowadays offers features to easily influence certain results.
• Try to optimize the search engine so that it already shows the correct answer in the search result and not just the link to the correct answer. For example, for people searches, the telephone number and e-mail address can be displayed in the search result, while searching for the canteen menu, the current meal can appear immediately. Modern search engines can handle such structured data if they are set up correctly.

Another option that is often not yet used is semantic tagging with the help of schema.org. Search engines such as Google, Bing and Yandex have long been able to read this semantic content. With good implementation, the effort for the editor is comparable to normal tagging but the value you get from it, is much greater. The difference is that you not only describe the content with synonyms, but build real relations between your content. James is not only tagged with Jim, but it is also found to be this unique person who, for example, works in that specific company and has that related profile at LinkedIn. This allows the search engine to distinguish several Jim's in the company, even if they have the same last name. This will enable your search engine to answer more complex questions in the future.

How good is your internal search engine?

***

Advatera is the initiator of an independent network of experts for digital internal and external communication and leadership. Learn more about our advertisment free knowledge sharing meetings...