Should your enterprise outsource search?

"Many of our clients," says Municipal Web Services' Anderson, "make frequent use of acronyms such as FOIA for Freedom of Information Act. Our basic search engine located documents when the user searched for the exact phrase, but missed many documents where the common acronym was used.

"I was contacted in 2000 by Alan Feuer, [CTO] of Blossom Software," Anderson says. "He explained that he could operate search from his servers and define synonyms so a user searching for 'freedom of information act' would get results that only used 'FOIA.' We've been working with Blossom ever since. Most important, Blossom keeps adding features, often without our having to ask for them."

The basic IIS search engine also does not index PDF documents, a format used more frequently now than ever by local governments, according to Anderson. "It's critical that our clients' users be able to search on the content of PDF documents." He says.

Anderson's experience is echoed by Kusmer of WebSideStory, "We talk about ‘customer love.' Hosted search is all about meeting customer needs for a better search system," he says. "Our focus on search delivers advanced features, with no downtime, no hassles with software upgrades and fixes. Our customers can focus on their Web sites and leave the nuances of search to our specially trained engineers."

Controlling content: boosting stories

Klein, of pionline.com, faced a different challenge. He notes, "Our former search engine was not too useful for many reasons. But the big problem was that we were not providing accurate and relevant search results. CrownPeak showed us its new search system. We had more control over the search algorithm and better search engine reporting. The search engine reporting enables us to monitor how people use our Web site, while the customization of the search engine algorithm makes sure our users can successfully find what they are looking for. The combination of these two features allows us to provide our online readers with the best possible online experience."

Content control is a coveted feature in FAST and WebSideStory. Feuer of Blossom Software says, "Webmasters have to master many applications. Hosted services like Blossom's provide on-the-fly summarization, query expansion, content boosting and many other advanced search features to improve the quality of the search experience easily and without having to invest hours of research to figure out how to make search better for users."

Know thy user

WebSideStory provides search to high-traffic sites like Bloomingdales, Victoria's Secret, Verizon Wireless, the Walt Disney Co., and more than 350 other organizations worldwide. Kusmer says, "Web analytics drive search relevancy." WebSideStory packages advanced Web site traffic analysis with its search system. "The payoff is that a customer can tell what content should be made more accessible, where users are having trouble finding information and determining what information is going to keep a Web site visitor coming back," Kusmer says.

Analytics plays an important part in FAST's hosted service. Laukli says, "We deliver a full range of Web site traffic reports. We identify which pages are causing a user to abandon a site. A Webmaster can use this information along with word and phrase analyses and referrer data to optimize a site for indexing by Google or Yahoo and improve the design of the site."

Instead of an IT professional figuring out a weblog, hosted search companies make analysis easy and quick. Blossom Software e-mails usage reports to each of its customers every week. CrownPeak provides a Web form for each customer where information is a click away.

What's the downside?

Hosted search may sound like the panacea to solve the "find it" problem, but is it almost too good to be true? Hosted search does show up as a bright spot in a landscape known for its cost pitfalls, mind-boggling complexity and hundreds of arcane weighting and tuning options. And there is often the almost insatiable appetite for CPU cycles and bandwidth with search implementation onsite. So outsourcing, at first blush, does makes good sense.

Surprisingly, security—the blood chilling vulnerability of an organization's data and systems to attack—is not a concern for hosted Web site search. The Web search services index a public facing Web site. Kusmer explains, "Hosted search offers better security, better uptime and a more stable system than most local search installations. The reason is that WebSideStory does one thing well and spreads the cost of best practices across our client base."

"The issue is not just saving money," says Rob Rose, CrownPeak's VP of sales and marketing, "Outsourcing frees up time, eliminates fiddling with plumbing and delivers a reliable, flexible service." Hosted search costs will continue to be commoditized as popularity rises. Still, the more popular play these days has been the Google Appliance. Cost ratios will continue to feed boardroom discussions on what to do. Blossom Software's services for small Web sites can cost as low as $300 per year. Other players are racing to have low-end offerings as well. Typical prices for larger Web sites are in the $15,000 to $20,000 per year range.

Laukli of FAST notes, "Customers who want special features such as the ability to handle multiple languages understand that this type of enhanced service boosts the costs somewhat."

Should you outsource Web site search?

Hosted search has risen to being a value in a market with costly, cumbersome solutions for Webmasters. The facts seem to indicate that hosted search is poised to become a more important option for many Webmasters.

Laukli underscores the growth of the industry by reporting the uptick in his own organization. "FAST is now building a second data center on the West Coast as a disaster recovery option for its hosted customers," he says. "Also, the Boston hosting facility will be expanded to meet sales demand. Data center planning is also underway in Asia to meet our growth in that market."

Blossom Software, CrownPeak and WebSideStory tell similar stories. "We're seeing a steady stream of inquiries," says Rose. "CrownPeak offers search; compatibility with third-party applications; and our own pre-configured, pre-integrated and fully managed Web site analytics service options, as well as full integration with leading analytics packages."

But the best reason may be the one offered by Stuart Schram, Web engineer for the Threat Open Source Information Gateway, a specialized information service for police and other first responders. "We use Blossom's search," he says. "It's fast, navigates our challenge response system, does on-the-fly abstracts of documents, highlights query terms and has never gone down in three years."

Search appliances

The Google Appliance and the Thunderstone Search Appliance offer IT professionals a turnkey solution for Web and enterprise search.

The Google Search Appliance and the Google Mini appeal to both large and small businesses. (Google, however, is firmly entrenched in the Fortune 500.) Both configure servers to handle a maximum number of documents. When more documents must be indexed, the appliance architecture supports scaling by adding additional appliances. Maintenance is provided by the manufacturer, and additional support and customization services are available from the vendors or authorized resellers.

The Thunderstone Search Appliance was the first turnkey search system available in North America, provides a wide range of features and is easy to configure. Prices begin at about $2,500 for 250,000 documents. The enterprise appliance begins at about $30,000.