Google Updates Search Appliance

Last month, Yahoo and IBM announced a Yahoo optimized version of OmniFind, an enterprise search utility. Less than three weeks later, Google is now offering up new features found within its own business search utility. No shortage of news out of the Googleplex today, as the worldwide leader in search announces updates to the Google Search Appliance. It seems that the company is taking my advice, starting off 2007 with a clear focus on improving its already dominant position with the realm of search. How does the Google Search Appliance work? Straight from the Source Biasing enables administrators to assign various weights to search results on their corporate network, based on source or type of content. For instance, if a company has multiple Documentum servers, the site administrator can strengthen the content from the one primary Documentum server. The same is true for types of content. If a financial services corporation values content in .pdf form more than content in a word processing document, administrators can use Source Biasing to increase the weight of .pdfs in the search results. A menu-driven interface allows weak or strong increases or decreases, and requires no complex coding or scripting. The new version of the Google Search Appliance also adds improved functionality with Google Sitemaps and methods of indexing content in SharePoint 2003 and SharePoint 2007. announced back in December, and three weeks later Google happens to release major updates for its own enterprise product? Hardly a coincidence, it seems. Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit | Furl Joe is a staff writer for latest ebusiness news