For some reason I missed this post from last week by Jon Udell about Indexing and searching Outlook email, but I thought his concluding paragraphs had a much broader impact on Enterprise Search in general.

… The Web has trained us, rightly, to expect that we just type in a word or two and get the “right” answer. I don’t know what the stats are on use of Google’s advanced search, or any advanced search, but my gut tells me such features are rarely used.

I used to think the answer was to standardize on query syntax. Now I think that might help some, but not much. More fruitful, perhaps, would be to use multiple search strategies in parallel, suggest “best” outcomes, and factor the user’s choices into future determinations of “best.”

For years now, we’ve been able to find things on the Web more easily than we can find things in our own personal data stores. There’s a huge opportunity, and a huge need, to swing that pendulum back toward the center.

Related Posts

• Personal Search Tool -- I just tested X1 for a few minutes and I’m truly impressed with its ability to quickly index and search my local repository of files and email messages. “X1 is free PC software that uses an advanced indexing process that...
• Nobody Uses Advanced Search -- Tim Bray’s second installment on search… “Every search engine has an “advanced search“ screen, and nobody (quantitatively, less than 0.5% of users) ever goes there. This drove us nuts back at Open Text, because our engine was very structurally savvy...
• Enterprise Search Opportunity -- Among the many interesting quotes in the recent Business Week Online Article regarding Microsoft’s Midlife Crisis, I found the following quote suggesting that one of the features scrapped from the initial release of Longhorn will be in the updated file...
• The Search for Intelligent Search -- The latest in Tim Bray’s series on search I think this one is the best yet. Here’s a quote: “Consider what a really intelligent search engine would have to do. It would have to read an arbitrary selection of documents...
• Visual Enterprise Search Tool -- John sent me a link to KartOO Technology’s search engine and visualization UI that was “developed in Flash to present a friendly and clear visual interface while integrating the graphic charter of your company.” You can see here what I...
• Personal Search Synergies -- After the excitement of the last week, I’m finally catching up on work and subsequently blogging. In particular last night I had a few minutes to check out one of the latest Desktop/Personal Search applications. Specifically, Lookout Soft’s email search...
• Google Voice Search Demo -- Those wacky Googlers … "To try out this demo, please follow these simple steps: 1. Pick up the phone and call the automated voice search system at (650) 318-0165. 2. After the prompt Say your Search Keywords, say your query...