September 17, 1998
Searching for the right search engine
By Tanyalynette Rosmarino
"Efficient access to information found on an intranet is becoming
just as important as the content itself," reports Matthew Bender & Co.'s T.L. Rosmarino.
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Searchability becomes crucial as companies migrate their content to intranets. The selection of
appropriate search engines depends largely on the environments in which they will operate.
There are two basic types of search engines: engines that search through the
HTML source code and engines that crawl the document (as it appears in a
browser) for the entered keyword(s). Like most software, search engines
generally have minimum platform requirements; before testing one, make
sure that your system is compatible. If time is a valuable commodity to
you (or, if you’re not very technically knowledgable), then look for an
engine that is easy to install and maintain.
Most files on an intranet consist of HTML, graphics, text and
combinations thereof. Each component of a page is searched. However, if
your intranet is more advanced and you are developing XML, PDF,
audio/video, dynamic database links, interactive pages or multilingual
pages, then you will want to have a search engine that can handle
all of these documents.
You’ll also have to decide what kind of search form you want your users to
have. The most practical approach would be to
implement a simple query page with an option for a more advanced search
that would allow users to select not only keywords or phrases but also the
type of media to be searched.
You'll next need to consider the search functions that you will offer your
users, since not all functions are
always available.
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Search Functions:
Advanced Search Options. Provides tips and tricks on how to return a
more complete query.
Field Searches. Allows users to search on a specific field(s), medium or
databases/indexes.
Query by Example. Users are able to search document types similar to a
given example.
Wildcard Characters. Allows users to insert wildcards when they are not
sure of the spelling.
Phrase Searching. Allows users to search for an exact phrase.
Boolean Operators. AND, OR, NOT; operators that allow users to be more
specific in phrase searches.
Natural Query Language. Allows a user to enter a question or phrase that
best describes the topic for searching.
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Use metadata tags for search
Using structured fields and metadata in HTML documents gives you the
ability to search on specific criteria. The inherent disadvantage to this is that all
documents must have the included fields in order to be searched; and
and, the time required to maintain the documents and database is thereby
increased.
The metadata tag resides in the <head> of a document and
provides additional information about the document. <meta content>
specifies the value for the meta-information.
One common example of the NAME attribute to the META tag is KEYWORDS, which defines a set of keywords for the document. When a search engine indexes the document the keywords will be used to categorize
the document.
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