atw: Re: Helping users find your docs via search engines
- From: Stewart Walker <helpfulau@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 24 Aug 2003 19:46:38 -0700 (PDT)
Hi all
Marcus...
The bank in question is using a very expensive
enterprise search product. Unfortunately I can't name
names at this point in time.
On a previous help project at another big bank we used
the Windows 2000 indexing server and that seemed to be
not too bad for something that's bundled with the
server operating system.
In both cases, we developed our own user interface for
kicking off searches and presenting results. The
default ones that came with both the search engines
referred to above were pretty dodgy from a usability
perspective.
Apparently Google has an enterprise product, but last
I checked it wasn't available outside North America.
A good site to visit to get your fill of search engine
info is www.searchenginewatch.com
Michael G...
Yes, meta data is certainly very important, not to
mention a good opportunity for some bad puns!
Cheers
Stewart
--- Marcus Amann <marcus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On the subject of applying search engines to Web
> sites and intranets, =
> what products have you come across that are
> relatively cheap and easy to =
> implement? Or do you code your own search engine?
> Using the free Google search engine isn't an option
> because of the ads =
> that appear in the results of a search.
> Any recommendations appreciated.
>
> Marcus Amann
> Technical Publications Manager
> TOWER Software
>
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>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Stewart Walker [mailto:helpfulau@xxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Monday, 25 August 2003 9:56 AM
> To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: atw: Helping users find your docs via
> search engines
>
>
> Hi all
>
> Recently I've been helping a big bank implement a
> new
> search engine on its intranet.
>
> Something we discovered is that a lot of the PDF and
> Word docs that hang off HTML pages on the intranet
> have rubbish in their metadata, particularly their
> Title property.
>
> "So what," you ask? The Title property is what many
> search engines use as the document title when
> listing
> items on search result pages.
>
> As an example, many of the PDFs on the bank's
> intranet
> were created from Quark Express. Either Quark or
> Distiller seems to insert the Quark doc's filename
> as
> the PDF's Title property. This has resulted in doc
> titles like 23041999.qxd. When it comes to helping a
> user decide whether to click a link that appears on
> a
> search results page, these titles are as useful as
> an
> ashtray on a motorbike!!
>
> So on behalf of search engine users everywhere, I
> have
> a plea: every time you publish a non-HTML file that
> users will be able to discover via an intranet,
> extranet or web search engine, PLEASE ensure the
> file
> has a meaningful Title property.
>
> Thanks. I feel better now I've got that off my chest
> :-)
>
> Cheers
>
> Stewart
> -------
> Stewart Walker
> Helpful Technology Pty Ltd
> Melbourne, Australia
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