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Cuil could be cool

bloem@radagio.com(Adriaan Bloem) — Fri, 1 Aug 2008 15:40:00 -0400

As the buzz has it, public website search engine Cuil is the new Google challenger. "Cuil" is apparently pronounced "cool", and "an old Irish word for knowledge".

The search engine was officially launched a few days ago and is enjoying its time in the spotlight. There's two reasons for that: the company was started by ex-Google employees; and it has an index that's supposed to be three times as large as Google's. Now, that's all very nice, but since CMS Watch doesn't evaluate the public search engines, but enterprise search tools ("behind the firewall search"), you may ask: what's the relevancy?

Well, the word is still out on Cuil's relevancy ranking -- or the freshness of its index, for that matter. One thing is certain: a larger index doesn't necessarily mean better results. The Cuil folks must have realized, though, that to be any kind of competition, your index has to be huge; it's the old numbers game that especially Yahoo! and Google used to engage in. Google was the first to quit playing that game, but somewhat "coincidentally" suddenly made a statement about their 1 trillion pages indexed.

As for how relevant this is for enterprise search: well, Cuil doesn't play that particular game (though many search companies do both or at least used to: Microsoft, FAST, Exalead, Vivisimo, the list goes on... and oh yes, Google). What struck me as most interesting is that Cuil attempts to change the way people don't just search, but find, by using an innovative new results interface. And that's always pretty good news... since so far, most vendors have rather unimaginatively been copying Google's design of search results, since that's what most users have grown used to on the web.

Of course, again, they're not the first to innovate: notable examples are the public search engines of Exalead (exalead.com) and Vivisimo (Clusty). Both are quite experimental, and especially Exalead is continuously updating the interface. What you like best is rather personal, but for me, both are more useful than Cuil, where a static footer on the bottom takes up too much of my screen real estate: frames are soooo 1996 (even if they're not actual HTML frames). But Exalead and Vivisimo's public search engines are more interesting because they are not just marketing, but also ongoing research: what you see there might actually turn up in an enterprise search interface near you soon.

Still, if Cuil will get people used to more varieties than just plain vanilla Google behind the firewall, as well, that would be nice for anyone trying to implement search. I think many would be quite happy to have users clamor for something that's more like Cuil, rather than "why can't we just have Google". It's time to innovate the interfaces beyond just Googlesque results listings and Endeca's facets. That wouldn't just be old Irish knowledge, it would actually be pretty cool.

A tale of two search technology selections

bloem@radagio.com(Adriaan Bloem) — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 13:09:00 -0400

CM Pros organized an event on the topic of enterprise search last week, with two case-study presentations and a fair bit of discussion among attendees. The key takeaways: website search is a lot harder than you'd think, and the attitude of a vendor really matters to your success.

When talking enterprise search, the "multi-repository enterprise" scenario is where all the really complex technology and fancy infrastructures reside today. We shouldn't forget, however, that website search -- powering that tiny form field in the right-hand top corner of your site -- remains one of the most common scenarios. Listening to the experiences of a large membership association was a clear reminder that it's certainly not as simple and straightforward to get right as many would think. (We can sympathize -- trying to get the cmswatch.com search right is an on-going struggle for us.)

The first case was presented someone who works for an integrator involved in the project. He is architect for their CMS and was therefore also put in charge of website search (which is a fairly typical arrangement, as the level of expert knowledge needed for website search is usually underestimated). He explained how it started out the same way many of these projects do -- "why don't we just get Google?" -- and how the organization decided to embark on that journey without much further discussion.

This led to exciting tales of a chase to find the lost Appliance somewhere in the server center when the "try-before-you-buy" clock was already ticking. It then turned out the Google Search Appliance (GSA) didn't actually match the original, rather straightforward 2-page requirements specification. Nor was it really as cheap as originally envisioned (one box wasn't enough). And, to boot, whereas the association imagined itself to carry some major clout with the vendor (their site is a very popular), it turned out to be nigh impossible to get Google to do customization. Before the web search goes live, they will need to bring in outside help to get some things ironed out on top of the Appliance.

Though it would be easy to blame Google for what went wrong, the presenter gave the company credit for delivering good support and a well-performing product. To the audience it seemed he handled it well, the product in itself was fine, but the main mistake the customer made was in underestimating what they were about to implement in the first place. As I overheard someone whisper next to me, "and to think this was a relatively simple site search project."

The second presentation was an account of the selection and implementation at a pharmaceutical company. They had twice before attempted to implement search functionality across multiple disparate repositories, and both times the project was aborted. This time, however, the project was officially declared a "success." As such, there was even an investigation of why the third attempt, almost against all odds, finally turned out right.

We were taken on a text-book product selection tour, but what stood out was there was definitely no one-horse race here. As someone who has uttered the caveat emptor "try against your own corpus of content" more than he cares to recount, I can certainly agree with the thorough proof-of-concept they put three vendors through. If CMS Watch ever awards a prize for heeding our advice, this POC might be nominated.

Though you should never underestimate the importance of how the technology functions, one of the main criteria was the attitude of vendors towards the project. Arrogance doesn't pay off in a well-executed test-drive, and in that respect it wasn't surprising the smallest vendor of the three scored points on cooperation and flexibility.

It was interesting to see the two opposites on one evening. One obviously struggled with what they expected to be a simple project, and wasn't much helped by their vendor. The other, on the other hand, braced itself for the worst but came out on top -- not in the least because they made sure the vendor they picked would be cooperative. So though it is easy to be cynical about the success rate of search projects, it can be done. Just heed the lessons learned, and come well prepared.

Enterprise Search Vendor Landscape, Circa 2008

tregli@cmswatch.com(Theresa Regli and Adriaan Bloem) — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 00:16:00 -0500

You might be tempted to select enterprise search vendors for your shortlist based on their supposed "leadership" status in the market -- status either conferred by analyst firms or assumed by the vendors themselves. However, CMS Watch analyst Theresa Regli argues that you need to look more closely at product and vendor alike -- and understand where both are headed -- to properly evaluate your longterm risks and opportunities in an evolving marketplace...

Enterprise Search: Trends for 2008

bloem@radagio.com(Adriaan Bloem) — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 18:05:00 -0500

What's new in enterprise search? Very much and very little, argues CMS Watch Contributing Analyst Adriaan Bloem. Based on just-completed market research, Adriaan concludes that enterprise search customers and vendors alike are still grappling with key usability and technical challenges. But 2007 saw substantial marketplace ferment, and 2008 is likely to bring more...

Vivisimo and MSN Search win FirstGov Search contract

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Mon, 26 Sep 2005 11:18:00 -0400

A month ago, we chronicled how some public search engines were yielding more coverage of .gov sites than the mammoth official U.S. government search engine at FirstGov.gov. Well, in a contract re-bid, it looks like uncle sam has decided to switch rather than fight, awarding the service to a combined team of MSN Search along with niche vendor Vivisimo. MSN should provide reach; Vivisimo should provide results clustering and some federated search (over time federal sites are supposed to be exposing some specialized metadata). As Enterprise Search Report readers know, clustering of the type offered by Vivisimo can be very hit-and-miss, depending on the quality of the underlying results set. Nevertheless, the switch should offer improved results. The ertswhile loser in all this would be the incumbent provider, Fast Search & Transfer, but FAST is doing well in other segments and I suspect will absorb the blow just fine.