Most of us have low expectation when it comes to site search.   We use google.com to find something we're looking for and hopefully we find our way right to it.  But sometimes you know you've been directed to the right website however you just cannot find the page you are looking for.  And if you're a savvy searcher, you have some luck using Google's site scope feature to drill down to the page you need.   If not, then you may need to turn to the website's own on-site search.
 
If you are looking for anything other than a very specific phrase or product code that only appears on the page you're looking for, your search experience is likely to be unpleasant.  On-site search is known for offering slow, low relevance results.
 
This is unfortunate because site search affords your company the unique opportunity to know exactly what visitors are looking for.  But, if your site cannot respond intelligently to these requests, it's a lost opportunity.  And, when it comes to your visitors’ perception of relevance, the bar is set pretty high, thanks to Google.  Google has transformed your visitors into discriminating searchers, expecting to find t just what they're looking for within the first page of results.   
 
Search is often the last thing on the list when a company is evaluating its public website.   As long as company executives are able to find their own biographies, site search gets a passing grade.  Making site search truly useful to your visitors can be very challenging to address, particularly if you're approaching it with a custom software solution.   Supporting features like spelling suggestions and stemming (making plurals out of singular keywords, and vice versa) require many thousands of lines of code.
 
More and more companies are looking for a better way, an intelligent search solution, to capture the attention of your visitors by serving up relevant results.  Google themselves are leading the pack with their own line of enterprise search products.  They're sold as search appliances, robust combination hardware/software solutions designed to meet all of your enterprise search needs.     
 
While the machines are packed with search power and extensibility,   configuration is not for the faint of heart.  Their use of template patterns in XSLT is a work of art that any developer can appreciate.  But it's not something most IT departments or web developers are equipped to manage.  You'd be well served to partner up with someone with extensive experience in this line of business like Definition 6.  With an experienced search integration specialist at your side,  you can harness the power and innovation of Google enterprise search products.

Our society has become accustomed to instant access to relevant information within moments of thinking of a question.  Even the slightest curiosity can easily be satiated by launching a web browser and typing a word that seems to represent what you're looking for.  Search engines have been around for ages-- and the way search results appear on a web page hasn't changed a great deal in the last 10 years.   It's still just a page with small paragraphs, underlined links and bolded keywords.  But dramatic improvements in search result relevance have changed the landscape of information pursuit.  What used to be considered "resourcefulness" in the ability to dig up obscure yet valuable information has become the norm, completely accessible to the average computer user.
 
Google has ushered us into this world of information access.  They've trained us to expect to find what we're looking for within the first page of results.  I find it frustrating to even have to read beyond the first few results.  Once you have to click beyond the first page of search results, you are considering whether you might have made a bad choice in what keywords you chose to search for. 
 
So how can you leverage this Google phenomenon in your business?    It's about leveraging the fact that everyone now knows how to use the Google user interface.  What if you were to offer that same familiar user interface to your employees?  They're already trained to form the appropriate "question" to type into the form, you just need to point them to your companies own Google.  Imagine giving users access to SharePoint sites, internal wiki's, company documents or even purchase orders without needing to publish another document explaining how?  How much do you spend on putting together documentation specifically geared to the "lowest common denominator" users?  Thanks to Google's enterprise technologies, you don't have to any more.  You can hook it up, turn it on and turn them loose.

And, people don't just search for web pages containing information.  They even use Google as an internet "quick-launch."   I was perplexed the first time I saw someone Google (yes, it's a verb too) "facebook.com" and click the first link.  Why not type it into the URL field of Firefox?  Because if you Google it, you don't even have to type it correctly.  You can completely botch the spelling and still find exactly what you want.  Furthermore, you don't have to guess on whether it's .NET or .COM or .BIZ and risk accidentally ending up on some unpleasant website that has nothing to do with what you're looking for.

There's another plethora of value and excitement in the Google OneBox features.  Although this isn't quite as well known as Google itself, most people have experienced it before.  You Google "MSFT" and you get the current stock quote for Microsoft Inc.  Or you Google "Weather 30306" and you see the Atlanta weather appear in a small comic-strip form across the top of the search results.  These aren't web pages so how is that information getting up there above the search results?  This is the Google OneBox.  It allows you to connect your enterprise Google Search Appliance to other sources of real-time information - SAP, CRM, ERP, Sales Force, etc.  You can add a connection between your Google Search Appliance and Sales Force to enable you to find contact information that is stored in SalesForce.com, by simply typing in the person’s name or some other associated information.  There are lots of things going on behind the scenes-- XML moving between these systems,   but that doesn't really matter.  The point is that you get your information without having to go into Sales Force.  Read our detailed document on the Onebox to dive into the details.
 
This is starting to sound pretty compelling, right?  For the accounting types, it's not a hard sale as it's going to deliver improved operational efficiency, reduced cost of infrastructure, and reduced complexity of internal data access.  The other half of your organization will be benefiting from the value of information that previously was just not accessible without substantial and cost prohibitive efforts.      Your newest client will find your most recent proposal was right "on the mark"…all because the business development executive was able to find previous RFP responses that your agency has delivered over the last 5 years.     
 
It's hard to imagine areas of your business that wouldn't be affected by implementing such a game changing device.  Definition 6 can work with you to implement Enterprise Search Solutions, helping your company leverage the power of Google Search.    We're certified Google Search Enterprise Partners, trained at Google Headquarters in Mountain view, California.  We have a team of top solutionists that are among the most experienced in enterprise search field.