Chasing the Tail of Search Engine Details
July 24, 2012
Details, details, what do users want? In order to run a successful business, that is the question that the entrepreneur of today must have answered. Siteimprove’s article “Create an Annual Search Cycle to Stay One Step Ahead of Your Users,” advises site administrators that the best way to catch results is to chase them.
Siteimprove actually encourages admins to double check the functionality of their platform, and:
- Examine the most popular search terms for each month
- Fill terms into an Excel table where you place the months side by side. It’s best to remove plural endings, synonyms, etc.
- Sort the terms alphabetically for each month. This will create an overview and help you distinguish between the terms to see if they appear in most months, or only in a few months.
- Ensure terms are easily identifiable which are specific to that month/or quarter.
We have all seen a pet chase their tail, but they don’t know what to do when they catch it. Chasing users to physically create a company overview can provide insight into anticipated results, but a good internal search engine already does that. An efficient program can create search term rules, store information and provide quick links for results in order to ensure users are finding exactly what they’re looking for.
Siteimprove seems to be running in circles to compensate for the possibility of an inefficient program. Is the system so bad that the users are chasing the search administrator like a pet chasing his tail?
Jennifer Shockley, July 24, 2012
The Codex of PLM Openness Gains another Provider
July 24, 2012
As the manufacturing industry is becoming less dependent on national borders the need for companies and providers to work together is growing. One initiative to help that happen is the Codex of PLM Openness. The Virtual Strategy article, “Trubiquity Joins the Codex of PLM Openness Initiative”, explains how another PLM provider has joined the initiative.
The article explains both the Codex itself and Trubiquity’s decision to join:
“The Codex of PLM Openness is a program of the ProSTEP iViP organization designed to provide a common understanding on openness of information technology (IT) systems in the context of PLM. This joint effort involved IT providers, integrators and customers and has defined measurable criteria that provides a clear position with regard to PLM Openness. Trubiquity joined the voluntary CPO as a self commitment to continue offering highly integrative solutions for PLM driven supply chain managed file transfer (MFT) and collaboration.”
PLM solutions used to be relegated to only the top manufacturers in the world but with the advances in technology (especially cloud) in the last few years PLM solutions have become affordable for even the smallest of enterprises. Providers who understand that many companies adopting PLM solutions are new to marketplace focus on customer support and training to ensure that solutions are utilized to their maximum. Openness begins with the relationship between customer and provider.
Catherine Lamsfuss, July 24, 2012
Quote to Note: Manage the Decline
July 23, 2012
I snipped a quotation from the Wall Street Journal, dead tree edition, this morning (July 23, 2012). On page B-6 the “Idol Auditions New Judges” write up included this gem:
American Idol is a juggernaut franchise that still has many season left but once a program starts to fall from its pear, you are working to minimize the decline, said Kris Magel, director of national broadcast at Initiative, a media buying firm…
I highlighted the phrase which I think is a keeper. I want to use this idea to characterize a number of search and content processing vendors’ actions in the closing months of 2012. With the shift to open source technologies beginning to gain momentum, many information retrieval companies, regardless of the spin in their marketing collateral, are likely to be working to maintain revenues. Growth may be tough. With funds in short supply for some firms, the white knight notion of an acquisition to get talented people (an acq-hire) may be galloping into the sunset. Trigger words for me now include predictive anything (analytics, tagging, coding, what have you), customer support or customer relationship management, and big data. Words do not equate with revenue in the tough months ahead.
Love that phrase, “minimize the decline.”
Stephen E Arnold, July 23, 2012
Sponsored by Ikanow
Claims Based Authentication in SharePoint 2013
July 23, 2012
The Web is buzzing with the release of SharePoint 2013 Preview, which was recently announced. Wictor Wilen, a SharePoint certified architect, takes on analysis of the new product with special attention being given to Claims-based authentication mode in his blog entry, “SharePoint 2013: Claims is the New Black.”
Wilen explains how the authentication mode has become less flexible:
Now in SharePoint 2013, Claims-based authentication mode is the default authentication method. You cannot from the web interface create content web applications using Classic mode. If you need to create a Classic web application you need use PowerShell – but you should not do that (unless you have some specific requirement) since Classic mode is now considered deprecated, and will likely be removed in future releases of SharePoint.
Wilen goes on to explain how the SharePoint team has made a number of improvements in Claims-based authentication since it has become the default. Lastly, he lists the next steps that users need to make to keep up with the changes from 2010 to 2013 SharePoint offerings.
For users who need efficient and intuitive enterprise search, but do not have the time to navigate SharePoint’s infrequent and upsetting changes, a third party solution may be a better fit. Check out the award winning Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise. With quarterly seamless updates and a more intuitive interface, Fabasoft Mindbreeze might be a more time and cost efficient solution for your organization.
Emily Rae Aldridge, July 23, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
NC Software Market and PLM Growing Together
July 23, 2012
With most of the world’s economy in a state of descent it is refreshing to report on an industry setting records in growth and revenue every year with even more growth predicted. The American Machinist article, “More Growth Forecast for Global NC Software Market”, is just one more testimony to the incredible demand for product lifecycle management solutions (PLM) across industries around the world.
The article describes how PLM is affecting the NC software market:
“Since 2002, the NC software market has shown modest but steady growth as global economies generally improved, CIMdata noted. Although the world market has seen significant growth in the sale of machine tools, and in manufacturing output, manufacturers have put greater emphasis on the efficient operation of machine tools —a consequence of strategies that have emphasized competitiveness. Thus, the overall PLM market (of which CAM is one part) has continued to grow.”
This article backs up what those in the industry already know and what several industry journals and reports have announced – PLM is alive and growing! With anticipated growth in 2012 to be in the double digits it is no surprise that more companies are turning to PLM to help manage costs, streamline processes and eliminate waste. Inforbix, a leader in the PLM field, offers PLM solutions that work with any industry because they focus on data management, the essential key to PLM. Their software provides “integrated cloud solutions for manufacturing companies that tackle everyday tasks such as finding, reusing, and sharing product data without the overhead of traditional data management systems” making them the natural choice for many companies.
Catherine Lamsfuss, July 23, 2012
SEO World Reacts to Google Knowledge Graph
July 23, 2012
Yikes, it’s a semantic invasion! Search Engine Watch declares, “Semantic Search: The Eagle Has Landed.” This article takes a look at Google’s newest Web search incarnation, the Knowledge Graph; the shift to the new system is already in progress.
Writer Jiyan Wei’s intended audience is made up of SEO pros, so most of the article focuses on what the development means for those who game results page rankings for a living. He does, however, give a good description of the service, using a search for “The Dark Knight Rises” as an example. He writes:
“Google’s goal is to infer that ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ is a specific entity type (a movie). Once this inference is made, they are then able to relate the entity with a set of associated entities (directors, actors, theatres, etc.). This relational understanding lays the foundation for a search experience that is far more consumer friendly, far more like ‘how humans understand the world.’. . .
“The right-column is almost entirely composed of content derived from semantic inference: it displays a list of people who have contributed to the movie as well as information about the movie pulled from Wikipedia.
“Semantic search is also currently influencing the organic search results by displaying people related to the movie, dates associated with the movie, and once the movie has been released and reviewed, ratings associated with the movie.”
Wei notes that the schema Google is using is publically available at Schema.org, a collaborative project shepherded by Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo. If you’re interested in keeping up with the changing rules behind the search engine optimization game, see the second half of the article.
Cynthia Murrell, July 23, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
IDC Open Source Search Reports Announced
July 23, 2012
IDC has released the first of a series of analyses of open source search vendors. The subject of the report is LucidWords Platform. Lucid Imagination has become one of the key open source search vendors. Data for the IDC “situation overview, future outlook, and essential guidance” is a result of a painstaking process. The IDC research team interviewed principals of Lucid Imagination, conducted a technical analysis of the Lucid technology platform, and used a range of data analysis methods to pinpoint key information from open source content. In addition to detailed, jargon-free information about the Lucid Lucene/Solr approach, the report provides an unvarnished analysis of the firm’s business model.
Order the full report at tp://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=236086.
One of the important facts uncovered in the course of the research is the strong uptake of Lucid technology in specific market sectors. Also, Lucid, unlike some proprietary and other open source search vendors, has strong venture backing, revenue growth, and a full-time professional open source search technology team. Each of these issues is explored in the IDC report number 236086. You can get additional information about the for-fee report from IDC’s “Get Doc” online service.
The team working on this project included Sue Feldman, who specializes in research on information access technologies including, including search engines, text analytics, categorization, unified access to structured and unstructured information, Big Data, visualization, and rich media search. Her research analyzes the trends and dynamics of the search and discovery software market and also quantifies the costs of information work to the organization. Ms. Feldman won IDC’s James Peacock Research award for her work on modeling and forecasting the search and retrieval technology markets, and an Innovation Award from IDC in 2007 for developing a new research program on the digital marketplace. She is a frequent speaker at industry events, and has won several national and international awards for her writing. She wrote the chapter on search engines for the 1999 volume of the Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science and was the first editor of the IEEE Computer Society’s Digital Library News. She is currently writing a book, The Answer Machine concerning the future of technology for information access. Before coming to IDC in 2000, Ms. Feldman was President for twenty years of Datasearch, an independent technology consulting firm, where she consulted on new retrieval technologies such as natural language processing, search engines, usability of online systems, and digital libraries.
One Vision of the Future of Enterprise Architecture
July 22, 2012
SYS-Con Media recently published an article detailing the impact of Cloud, big data analytics and mobility on enterprise architecture in the article “The New Enterprise Reference Architecture.”
For those who do not already know, the term Enterprise Architecture refers to the process of moving business vision and strategy into effective enterprise change by creating, communicating and improving the key requirements, principles and models that describe the enterprise’s future state and enable its evolution.
This article is based on the assumption that a lot has changed over the past couple of years regarding the ways that enterprises chart their enterprise architecture. It provides readers with a diagram of “the new enterprise reference architecture” along with accompanying text providing a detailed explanation of the role of each layer.
When discussing the enterprise search layer, the article states:
“While the data virtualization layer provides a common layer to access all the disparate data sources, we still needed robust searching capabilities on top of it and hence this layer is important. Some of the attributes of this layer are :
- Keyword based search
- Auto Correction
- Thesaurus expansion
- Relevance Ranking
This layer works closely with the context aware content layer. Products like Microsoft FAST Search Engine, Google Search Engine will fall under this category.”
While the new enterprise architecture is more complex than the old one, it also is filled with more possibilities. Our only question is what happened to enterprise search as a platform?
Jasmine Ashton, July 22, 2012
Sponsored by IKANOW
New Words for Search Experts
July 22, 2012
A happy quack to business Insider. The collection of terms in “20 Hilarious Programming Jargon Phrases You Should Use When Talking To Engineers” will revivify search, analytics, and content marketing. I look forward to search vendors reinventing themselves as predictive analytics, business intelligence, and customer support solutions companies crafting this type of marketing collateral:
- In a PowerPoint, “We use Jenga code to activate our special features for gold status customers.” Translation: You change one thing and the system implodes. You call us and we fix it over the weekend and outside of normal work hours billing at three times the normal support fee.
- On a blog, “Our common law feature activates when a user modifies a report template.” Translation: If you recolor one slice of a pie chart, you will lose your work. Forever.
- In a user forum as an answer to a question: “The hydra operation automatically introduces additional dependencies which may lead to an opportunity to restore the data set.” Translation: fix one thing and break two more.
Ladies and gentlemen, start your marketing engines.
Stephen E Arnold, July 22, 2012
Sponsored by HighGainBlog
SLI Turns Up the Volume
July 21, 2012
The beat goes on, but there for a moment SoundStage customers were having trouble finding specific beats. According to SLI System’s release “SoundStage Direct Connects Audiophiles to Hard-to-Find Vinyl LPs Using Site Search from SLI Systems” SoundStage switched to SLI and got their search rhythm back in tune.
SoundStageDirect is an online seller of new and reissue vinyl LPs along with LP turntables and other stereo equipment. They have one of the largest selections of vinyl LP’s online and cater to LP enthusiasts on an international level. Making sure their cliental has efficient, user friendly search is a top priority, and non-relevant query results were becoming an issue.
Since the switch to SLI, SoundStage has seen online conversions and revenue increase more than five times per visit. They exclaimed:
“Right away, we could see that search results were much more closely related to keyword terms, and because Learning Search learns from the way our customers search for LPs and applies that information to future searches, results become even more relevant over time. We also now offer search suggestions, which help customers find LPs from similar musicians, which can motivate them to buy more.”
The technology created by SLI Systems provides their clients with a full-service site search, including merchandising, navigation and user-generated SEO. .Music is the universal language of mankind, and SLI just turned up the volume for SoundStage.
Jennifer Shockley, July 21, 2012
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