Google upgrades enterprise search engine

04.01.2007
Google announced on Thursday that two new search features will be added to its Enterprise Search Appliance by the end of the month.

The Result Hit Clustering feature does what its name claims to do: it clusters or categorizes search result by type of information. For example, if a user selects only the world "customer" for a search the clustering feature might categorize the results by customer support, customer contacts, and customer case studies.

"The algorithms we have will come up with these categories and give them a label," said Matthew Glotzbach, head of product for Google enterprise.

The second new feature is dubbed Source Biasing and allows administrators of the search system to provide weighting or bias toward results from a specific part of the network, said Glotzbach.

For example, for larger companies with multiple content management systems, a search administrator might call upon the system to place a newer, more frequently used content management data at the top of the results page.

A search can also put in a favorable bias by file type, for example PDF over a Word .doc file.

When the new version ships at the end of the month, either as a download or in the search appliance, it will also include what the company said was "improved integration with Google Sitemaps export."

Google is also adding source connectors for indexing content in SharePoint 200 and 2007.