New Year, New Features!

Posted by Matthew Glotzbach, Google Enterprise

This is the time of year for reflection, and the Enterprise team celebrated by reflecting on top customer requests from 2006. One top request was the ability to customize search results based on the individual characteristics of each customer's environment. One comment from a customer at a financial company stood out. He told us his organization considers pdf files of higher value than documents or spreadsheets, because pdfs typically represent the final version of rules or regulations that guide his business process. He was simply looking for a way to strengthen pdfs in search results.

This need inspired Source Biasing, a new feature of the Google Search Appliance that enables companies to strengthen or weaken the weight of content based on type of content or actual source. But at the same time, we didn't want to make the feature overly complex or require complex scripting or coding. We think the new menu-driven approach of Sourcing Biasing feature balances simplicity with control.

But we also added another new feature -- something we think may improve the search experience for both users and administrators. It's called Results Hit Clustering. While clustering results may not be new to enterprise search, we think we have a new spin on it that makes it more relevant for users and easier to implement for
administrators.

There's more about both features in our press announcement or on the Google Search Appliance page.

So, while our holidays weren't exactly quiet, we think they were relatively productive. Feel free to tell us what you think of the new features.

Thanks for a great 2006. We look forward to an equally productive 2007.