Tag Archives: search tool

Collaborative, Social and Adaptive Relevance in Enterprise Search

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Providing spot-on results with good relevance in Enterprise Search solutions is one of the hardest tasks when working with findability. Sure, it is doable to work out a generic model for ranking results based on the organization’s most common requirements on findability in conjunction with available metadata of the information made findable. But is it enough?

The burning question is: How can you ensure that the generic relevance model does not get outdated once the Findability solution has been in use for a month, half a year, a year and the implementation crew is long gone?

Findwise recently released a large Enterprise Findability solution at a customer in the electrical power industry in Sweden. In the project we identified personalized and adaptive relevance as two key requirements for the findability solution to provide real, future-proof value-in-use to a large set of people with fundamentally different roles within the company. This blog post will focus on the latter requirement, adaptiveness: How can we make sure that an Enterprise Findability solution returns search results that become better and better as the solution is used?

Let user behavior improve the behavior of the search tool

The Enterprise Findability solution rolled out at the power company contains two features that, put together, build the foundation of a continuously improving relevance model:

  1. A feature that promotes popular content given a query term – “social relevance”
  2. A feature that continuously changes the relevance model by boosting the relevance of popular documents – “adaptive relevance

Social relevance

Inspired by e-commerce actors on the web, the delivered Enterprise Findability solution uses the logged behavior of its users to promote popular content. When an end-user searches for, e.g. “terawatt hours”, the solution by default offers search results ranked and sorted according to the generic relevance model. This is what any search tool would do. But this solution also uses search logs to promote popular content just as e-commerce sites have been doing for years – “Other people searching for ‘terawatt hours’ viewed ‘Current power production’ (intranet page), ‘Definition of terms in the electrical power industry’ (PDF document)” etc.

By combining the intel of the search logs (where the end-user behavior of an Enterprise Findability solution is constantly collected) and the best bets (editorially provided “sponsored links”) with the regular search result, end-users are presented with a rich set of information answering their original question from different angles. And the best part of it is that the social relevance feature constantly improves as the tool is used. People get better results as time goes by.

Adaptive relevance

In addition to the social relevance feature, the vast amount of real search behavior compiled in the search logs is used for improving the generic relevance model as well. The solution tracks changes in popularity of content and adapts the document-level scores of documents and web pages in the search index accordingly. If a document is accessed often through the search tool, the document will be deemed “more important” and start climbing towards top positions in the search result. And if a previously popular document becomes less popular as time goes by, the document’s impact on the relevance model is decreased. In the end, content that has great importance for a limited amount of time (such as news items and weekly lunch menus) will first peek and then dip in the search index. The search index and the generic relevance model attached to it will stay fresh.

From generic to personalized search experience

This blog post has pinpointed a couple of solutions for a continuously-improving, generic relevance model in an Enterprise Findability solution. Obviously, generic models are generic, i.e. good enough for the many, not perfect for the few. There are great ways to address personalization solving many of the role-based challenges of Enterprise Findability, but let’s leave that to another, future blog post. Stay tuned!

Quick Website Diagnostics with Search Analytics

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I have recently been giving courses directed to web editors on how to successfully apply search technology on a public web site. One of the things we stress is how to use search analytics as a source of user feedback. Search analytics is like performing a medical checkup. Just as physicians inspect patients in search of maladious symptoms, we want to be able to inspect a website in search of problems hampering user experience. When such symptoms are discovered a reasonable resolution is prescribed.

Search analytics is a vast field but as usual a few tips and tricks will take you a long way. I will describe three basic analysis steps to get you started. Search usage on public websites can be collected and inspected using an array of analytics toolkits, for example Google Analytics.

How many users are using search?

For starters, have a look at how many of your users are actually using search. Obviously having a large portion of users doing so means that search is becoming very important to your business. A simple conclusion stemming from such evidence is that search simply has to work satisfactorily, otherwise a large portion of your users are getting disappointed.

Having many searchers also raises some questions. Are users using search because they want to or because they are forced to, because of tricky site navigation for example? If you feel that the latter seems reasonable you may find that as you improve site navigation your number of searchers will decrease while overall traffic hopefully increases.

Just as with high numbers, low numbers can be ambiguous. Low scores especially coupled with a good amount of overall site traffic may mean that users don’t need search in order to find what they are looking for. On the other hand it may mean that users haven’t found the search box yet, or that the search tool is simply too complicated for the average user.

Aside from the business, knowing how popular search is can be beneficial to you personally. It’s a great feeling to know that you are responsible for one of the most used subsystems of your site. Rub it in the face of your colleague!

From where are searches being initiated?

One of the first recommendations you will get when implementing a search engine for your web site is to include the search box on each and every page, preferably in a standardized easy-to-find place like the top right corner. The point of having the search box available wherever your users happen to be is to enable them to search, typically after they have failed to find what they are looking for through browsing.

Now that we know that search is being conducted everywhere, we should be keeping an eye out for pages that frequently emit searches. Knowing what those pages are will let us improve the user experience by altering or completing the information there.

Which are the most common queries?

The most frequently issued queries to a search system make up a significant amount of the total number of served queries. These are known as head queries. By improving the quality of search for head queries you can offer a better search experience to a large amount of users.

A simple but effective way of working with search tuning is this. For each of the 10, 20 or 50 most frequent queries to the system:

  1. Imagine what the user was looking for when typing that query
  2. Perform that query yourself
  3. Examine the 5-10 top results in the result list:
    • Do you think that the user was content with those results
    • If yes, pat your back 🙂
    • If not, tweak using synonyms or best bets.

Go through this at least once a month. If the information on your site is static you might not need to change a lot of things every time, but if your content is changing or the behavior of the users you may need to adjust a few things.

High Expectations to Googlify the Company = Findability Problem?

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It is not a coincidence that the verb “to google” has been added to several renowned dictionaries, such as those from Oxford and Merriam-Webster. Search has been the de facto gateway to the Web for some years now. But when employees turn to Google on the Web to find information about the company they work for, your alarm bells should be ringing. Do you have a Findability problem within the firewall?

The Google Effect on User Expectations

“Give us something like Google or better.”

 

“Compared to Google, our Intranet search is almost unusable.”

 

“Most of the time it is easier to find enterprise information by using Google.”

The citations above come from a study Findwise conducted during 2008-2009 for a customer, who was on the verge of taking the first steps towards a real Enterprise Search application. The old Intranet search tool had become obsolete, providing access to a limited set of information sources only and ranking outdated information over the relevant documents that were in fact available. To put it short, search was causing frustration and lots of it.

However, the executives at this company were wise enough to act on the problem. The goal was set pretty high: Everybody should be able to find the corporate information they need faster and more accurately than before. To accomplish this, an extensive Enterprise Search project was launched.

This is where the contradiction comes into play. Today users are so accustomed to using search as the main gateway to the Web, that the look and feel of Google is often seen as equal to the type of information access solution you need behind the firewall as well. The reasons are obvious; on the Web, Google is fast and it is relevant. But can you—and more importantly should you—without question adopt a solution from the Web within the firewall as well?

Enterprise Search and Web Search are different

  1. Within the firewall, information is stored in various proprietary information systems, databases and applications, on various file shares, in a myriad of formats and with sophisticated security and version control issues to take into account. On the Web, what your web crawler can find is what it indexes.
  2. Within the firewall, you know every single logged in user, the main information access needs she has, the people she knows, the projects she is taking part in and the documents she has written. On the Web, you have less precise knowledge about the context the user is in.
  3. Within the firewall, you have less links and other clear inter-document dependencies that you can use for ranking search results. On the Web, everything is linked together providing an excellent starting point for algorithms such as Google’s PageRank.

Clearly, the settings differ as do user needs. Therefore, the internal search application will be different from a search service on the web; at least if you want it to really work as intended.

Start by Setting up a Findability Strategy

When you know where you are and where you want to be in terms of Findability—i.e. when you have a Findability strategy—you can design and implement your search solution using the search platform that best fits the needs of your company. It might well be Google’s Search Appliance. Just do not forget, the GSA is a totally different beast compared to the Google your users are accustomed to on the Web!

References

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googling

Six Simple Steps to Superior Search

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Do you have your search application up and running but it still doesn’t quite seem to do the trick? Here are six simple steps to boost the search experience.

Avoid the Garbage in-Garbage out Syndrome

Fact 1: A search application is only as good as the content it makes findable

If you have a news search service that only provides yesterday’s news, the search bit does not add any value to your offering.

If your Intranet search service provides access to a catalog of employee competencies, but this catalog does not cover all co-workers or contain updated contact details, then search is not the means it should be to help users get in touch with the right people.

If your search service gives access to a lot of different versions of the same document and there is no metadata available as to single out which copy is the official one, then users might end up spending unnecessary time reviewing irrelevant search results. And still you cannot rule out the risk that they end up using old or even flawed versions of documents.

The key learning here is that there is no plug and play when it comes to accurate and well thought out information access. Sure, you can make everything findable by default. But you will annoy your users while doing so unless you take a moment and review your data.

Focus on Frequent Queries

Fact 2: Users tend to search for the same things over and over again.

It is not unusual that 20 % of the full query volume is made up of less than 1 % of all query strings. In other words, people tend to use search for a rather fixed set of simple information access tasks over and over again. Typical tasks include finding the front page of a site or application on the Intranet, finding the lunch menu at the company canteen or finding the telephone number to the company helpdesk.

In other words, you will be much advised to make sure your search application works for these highly frequent (often naïve) information access tasks. An efficient way of doing so is to keep an analytic eye on the log file of your search application and take appropriate action on frequent queries that do not return any results whatsoever or return weird or unexpected results.

The key learning here is that you should focus on providing relevant results for frequent queries. This is the least expensive way to get boosted benefit from your search application.

Make the Information People Often Need Searchable

Fact 3: Users do not know what information is available through search.

Users often believe that a search application gives them access to information that really isn’t available through search. Say your users are frequently searching for ”lunch menu”, ”canteen” and ”today’s lunch”, what do you do if you do not have the menu available at all on your Intranet or Web site?

In the best of worlds, you will make frequently requested information available through search. In other words, you would add the lunch menu to your site and make it searchable. If that is not an option, you might consider informing your users that the lunch menu—or some other popular information people tend to request—is not available in the search application and provide them with a hard-coded link to the canteen contractor or some other related service as a so called “best bet” (or sponsored link as in Google web search).

The key learning here is to monitor what users frequently search for and make sure the search application can tackle user expectations properly.

Adapt to the User’s Language

Fact 4: Users do not know your company jargon.

People describe things using different words. Users are regularly searching for terms which are synonymous to—but not the same as—the terms used in the content being searched. Say your users are frequently looking for a ”travel expense form” on your Intranet search service, but the term used in your official company jargon  is ”travel expenses template”. In cases like this you can build a glossary of synonyms mapping those common language terms people tend to search for frequently to official company terms in order to satisfy your users’ frequent information needs better without having to deviate from company terminology. Another way of handling the problem is to provide hand-crafted best bets (or sponsored links as in Google web search) that are triggered by certain common search terms.

Furthermore, research suggests that Intranet searches often contain company-specific abbreviations. A study of the query log of a search installation at one of Findwise’s customers showed that abbreviations—query strings consisting of two, three or four letters—stood for as much as 18 % of all queries. In other words, it might be worthwhile for the search application to add the spelled-out form to a query for a frequently used abbreviation. Users searching for “cp” on the Intranet would for example in effect see the results of the query “cp OR collaboration portal”

The lesson to learn here is that you should use your query log to learn the terminology the users are using and adapt the search application accordingly, not the other way around!

Help Users With Spelling

Fact 5: Users do not know how to spell.

Users make spelling mistakes—lots of them. Research suggests that 10—25 % of all queries sent to a search engine contain spelling mistakes. So turn on spellchecking in your search platform if you haven’t already! And while you are at it, make sure your search platform can handle queries containing inflected forms (e.g. “menu”, “menus”, “menu’s”, “menus’”). There’s your quick wins to boost the search experience.

Keep Your Search Solution Up-To-Date

Fact 6: Your search application requires maintenance.

Information sources change, so should your search application. There is a fairly widespread misconception that a search application will maintain itself once you’ve got it up and running. The truth is you need to monitor and maintain your search solution as any other business-critical IT application.

A real-life example is a fairly large enterprise that decided to perform a total makeover of its internal communication process, shifting focus from the old Intranet, which was built on a web content management system, in favor of a more “Enterprise 2.0 approach” using a collaboration platform for active projects and daily communication and a document management system for closed projects and archived information.

The shift had many advantages, but it was a disaster for the Enterprise Search application that was only monitoring the old Intranet being phased out. Employees looking for information using the search tool would in other words only find outdated information.

The lesson to learn here is that the fairly large investment in efficient Findability requires maintenance in order for the search application to meet the requirements posed on it now and in the future.

References

100 Most Often Mispelled Misspelled Words in English – http://www.yourdictionary.com/library/misspelled.html

Definition of “sponsored link” – http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Sponsored+link