Table of Contents
What is Enterprise search?
“Enterprise search” is a term that can mean different things to different people.
While the term can frequently be used to mean a particular kind of internal search functionality for large businesses and organizations, at AddSearch, enterprise is a way to identify users with more specific feature requirements.
- Sometimes these are users that require intensely scalable search functionality spread across many domains and subdomains with a high volume of index items and requests.
- But this can also mean users who know exactly what is needed for their firm and are looking for a fully tailored solution.
Because of the wide gamut of possibilities, it’s important that users have access to an array of customizable options to make sure those accessing their site’s content via search are receiving the best results in the most efficient way.
Enterprise content appears in many different forms. The various document types need to be traceable to a particular date and need to be securely stored.
Beyond this, an important function is to distribute this content to the right people; this can mean both employees or customers.
Why do we need Enterprise Search?
While every Enterprise client’s requirements are unique, we’ve found certain baseline similarities in what should be accounted for in developing a thorough and robust Enterprise search plan:
- Capability to crawl and index multiple domains, enterprise content behind a firewall or login, and various document types (like PDFs and Word documents)
- Dynamic search filtering and a higher degree of specificity in search queries
- Filter query results using date ranges, document types, relevant categories, and of course, the opportunity to combine multiple filters (also known as ‘faceted search’)
- All above while keeping your data secure and compliant
As your business or organization’s website grows, it’s increasingly important to make your site content quickly and intuitively accessible to your audience. But the metric for successfully doing so is not the same for everyone.
This is where ‘enterprise’ level search comes in. With AddSearch’s Enterprise plan, you can speak with a premiere support staff to make custom feature selections that are right for your site. Access to priority support means making sure you have constant and reliable communication with a world-class support staff anytime you have questions or concerns.
Let’s dive in deeper.
Crawling and indexing
As mentioned earlier, enterprise search tool should have the capability to crawl and index content from multiple domains that may be located behind a firewall or login. The crawler should also be capable of crawling different document types which can be traced back to a specific date.
Multiple domains
In most cases, enterprise content is scattered across multiple domains. You might have a blog on WordPress, Helpdesk and knowledge base in Zendesk and product catalogue in Shopify. Enterprise search tool needs to be able to crawl and index these domains to provide a single access point to return relevant search results in a uniform fashion. Federated search is another term for crawling and indexing multiple domains with a single access point (search box).
AddSearch supports crawling and indexing multiple domains. Setting up a domain for crawling and indexing is a reasonably easy and can be done straight from the dashboard.
Content behind a firewall
In many cases, enterprise servers are protected with a firewall to block unwanted traffic. AddSearch is able to crawl content with restricted access once you whitelist our IP-numbers in the firewall settings. If you want to know more, check out the documentation pages.
Content behind a login
A great portion of enterprise content is behind a login. Having said this, finding the authorized content within the enterprise is important – especially for an enterprise search which should be useful within the enterprise as well.
AddSearch supports crawling and indexing enterprise content behind a login. To keep the business critical information safe AddSearch also allows filtering the access to the authorized content.
Document types
Enterprise companies produce content that comes in different document types. Microsoft Office documents and PDFs are the most popular document types and finding them with an enterprise search is crucial.
AddSearch supports the crawling and indexing of PDFs as well as Microsoft Word and Powerpoint documents. Setting up the crawling of documents type feature is straightforward. You can follow these instructions for setting up the document types feature.
Filtering
Enterprise search tools should also be capable of filtering the search results to be relevant for specific users. Filters should also be able to be based on date ranges, domains, subdomains and relevant sections of the website as well as document types. Also, the filters should allow mixing filters to create a faceted search where the user can narrow down the search with multiple filters.
Date ranges
Enterprise search should be capable of filtering search results to a specific date or a date range to narrow down the search results. Filtering the search results to a date range is handy when you wish to locate documents that, for instance, originate from a meeting held in the summer of 2018. To locate the documents that were created in summer 2018 you would create a filter that would include all documents between the 1st of July and the 31st of August 2018.
AddSearch supports range filters which allow the inclusion of search results that are located in between dates. For more information please visit the documentation.
Relevant categories
As enterprises have departments that produce content that is useful specifically to the people at the departments, enterprise search should be capable of filtering relevant content to the right people.
For instance, an enterprise may have specific content for IT, sales, HR as well as for their customers. Having the opportunity to narrow down the search results to the right people makes finding the content easier.
AddSearch collects category information when it crawls and indexes web pages. Category information in this context refers to domains, subdomains, and paths. You can use this information as a basis when setting up filters.
Category filters allow setting up searches that return search results from a specific area (category) that may be relevant to certain people. For more information please visit the documentation.
Faceted search
A single filter may narrow down the number of relevant search results significantly. Combining filters to narrow down the search results even further makes finding relevant content a breeze. Faceted search is another term for narrowing down the search results with multiple filters.
For example, if an employee of the HR-department wants to find a CV in a PDF document type from an applicant who applied for work on January 2017 she can use the following filters to narrow down the search.
- Applicants name as the search term
- PDF document type
- Date range from 1st to 28th of February
AddSearch supports faceted search and implements it with dynamic category filters. Dynamic category filters allow the user to choose the filters with which to narrow down the search. For more information please visit our documentation.
Looking for Enterprise search tool?
You’re in the right hands. Here at AddSearch we work to create best search for companies, websites and websites visitors. Reach out to our sales team and we’ll set up a demo for you.
