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  • From: "Gina Norman" <gina.norman AT nortelnetworks.com>
  • To: "'Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/'" <internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: RE: [internetworkers] Synonym Searching On Google
  • Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2003 09:09:44 -0400

Title: RE: [internetworkers] Synonym Searching On Google

> We are actually considering purchasing a Google search appliance for
> work.  Our corporate intranet has the worlds worst search engine.  I
> have never found a document that resembles anything I was looking for,
> we need Google.

Something to know about Google and intranets:

Google's big "trick" -- and one of the main reasons why its results are so accurate -- is that it uses a referral ranking as a significant part of its algorithm.  The more sites that point to a site (let's call it Site A), the higher Site A's ranking will be.

The bad news is that this doesn't often work well on an intranet... why?
1) There's a much much smaller pool of referrals to build the rankings
2) On intranets it's often the case that there's not a lot of cross-linking.  In fact, some intranets (particularly centrally managed ones with an integrated structure and hierarchical navigation from an intranet home page) actively discourage lower level sites from pointing at a bunch of stuff that's outside their frame of work.  (Why, after all, should every department in the company recreate the main navigation system?  Waste of work...)

So, tho (to quote Jared Spool from the conference I was at last week) "Google has spoiled it for the rest of us" by being so good, it is not the case, necessarily, that it will solve your intranet problems.

My $.02 (and Jared's), YMMV,

-Gina

Gina Norman
Senior Manager, Global Web Governance
ginanorm AT nortelnetworks.com
919-905-4801 (ESN 355)
http://www.nortelnetworks.com





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