Search

From Regional Knowledge Resource Kit

Enterprise search

The term "enterprise search" is used to describe the application of search technology to information within an organisation. This is in contrast to the other two main type of horizontal search environment: web search and desktop search (see below).

The major challenge faced by enterprise search is the need to index documents from a variety of sources such as: File systems, Intranets, Document Management Systems, E-mail, Databases and then present a consolidated list of relevance ranked documents from these various sources. In addition, many applications require the integration of structured data as part of the search criteria and when presenting results back to the users. And of course access controls are vital if users are to be restricted to documents to which they are granted access by the various document repositories within the enterprise. These major challenges are unique to enterprise search.

For more information on enterprise search see this Wikipedia article.

Enterprise search - what is the find cost of not finding information?

Managers sometimes put off enterprise search initiatives due to cost. But what is the cost to your organisation if your staff can't find information? Take a look at this blog post.

Web search

See Internet searching.

Desktop search

Desktop search is the name for the field of search tools which search the contents of a user's own computer files, rather than searching the Internet. These tools are designed to find information on the user's PC, including web browser histories, e-mail archives, text documents, sound files, images and video.

For more information on desktop search see this Wikipedia article.