7 tips for better enterprise search

7+ tips for better
search
Presented at Congres Intranet, 17 March 2015, Utrecht, The Netherlands
@kristiannorling
by Kristian Norling from

Lifetime guarantee
kristian@intranatverk.se

“Enterprise data simply isn’t like web or
consumer data – it’s characterised by
rarity and unconnectedness rather than
popularity and context.”

Charlie Hull, Flax Blog

Source: Julie Hunt
Enterprise Search:
Un-Cool and Mission Critical

Level of satisfaction with
Enterprise Search?

18.5%
Mostly/Very Satisfied
Source: Enterprise Search and Findability Survey 2013

What are the obstacles to finding
the right information?

63 % Poor search functionality
52 % Don't know where to look
51 % Inconsistency in tagging content
50 % Lack of adequate tags
33 % Don’t know what to look for

A. Vision
B. Principles
C. Goals
D. Governance
E. 1-3-5 year plan

Search strategy
This is an executive summary of _______________ strategy for enterprise search. Here are
the main points presented, in order easily orient stakeholders about the strategy and be able
to take a decision on its establishment.
Vision and mission statement
Our vision for search is "to deliver the right information when it is needed." It means that users
are not only using search to find, but that the search service also uses activity streams and
notifications if anything of importance for the user arises. The information must be made more
interconnected (intelligent).

The primary purpose for the search service is to avoid the risk of someone acting on
outdated knowledge.  Secondary purpose is to provide as complete information base as
possible in order not to unnecessarily create information that already exists somewhere within
the organisation.

We must strive to make the search service known and well used to realize these goals.
Usage Requirements and Usability
We will focus on the user experience and work user oriented. This is because the search
function is there to help with finding information and knowledge even when it is not obvious
for the user where to find information, or that it evens exists.
Two basic complications to adapt to is that users have varying digital maturity, as well
as varying expertise in the information they are seeking. Therefore, the search service should
accommodate to both the novice and the expert way of expressing themselves, but should
also support the use pattern that distinguishes the nontechnical from the digital natives.

The search service must live up to the high standards for accessibility and usability, both from
a desktop computer and mobile.
Governance, Management and Organization
The search function should be continuously improved. This by listening to user feedback and
demands and by using search analytics.

In addition, the governance organization has annual prioritization of activities to be carried out
the forthcoming year, and to follow up on the efforts made previous year.
The organization intends to gradually move towards a more generic information
architecture, which for obvious reasons affecting those managing information sources. In
addition to this, it is important to provide opportunities for personalized search results, where
appropriate, even for classified material.

How many contributes
information to your intranet?

How many works with search?
Who is responsible for search?

Chalmers Technical University:
Part time (25%) makes a BIG
difference

3. Communication
(stakeholder management)

A. Sneakernet
B. Meet people
C. Observe usage
D. Talk about search

4. Information
(a.k.a. content)

Information lifecycle
management

Having a good information hygiene
is very important ...  
Crap in = Crap out

Watch out for the information ROT 
Redundant
Outdated
Trivial

Delete
Archive
Keep 
Delete, Archive or keep?

Search engine optimization
This quick reference guide outlines the method for optimizing content for the search engine to help
Ernst & Young practitioners get more accurate search results.
A quick reference guide for Ernst & Young professionals
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a way to help you and other Ernst & Young practitioners quickly and easily find the content
you need using search.
Imagine that you are submitting a successful proposal document that Ernst & Young presented to an automotive client for internal audit
work, which you consider to be a good example. Put yourself into the shoes of the person who will be searching for an internal audit
proposal for automotive. Which of the following documents is most likely to come back in a search for “internal audit proposal
automotive”?
A. Title: 2012 Internal Audit Proposal Automotive Sweden
Summary/Abstract: This internal audit proposal was presented to a Swedish automotive client, and includes information
on our global capabilities, credentials related to the automotive services industry, Ernst & Young's
differentiators, the methodology, and the overview of knowledge and training.
1. Optimize core content
This relates to the main content fields in all of our content repositories, namely the title/headline, abstract/summary and
body/attachment, which are the three most important items in terms of search performance.
► First, identify a list of keywords describing the key content of the
document that has to be added to the knowledge system, and rank these
keywords. If you save documents in the knowledge system on behalf of a
stakeholder, please ask the stakeholder to provide this information.
The main goal of this step is to identify a list of search terms that
should return this document as a result.
► Second, create an appropriate title. The title should be descriptive and
contain the most important keyword(s) from the list of keywords created
in the previous step.
Example: Your defined keywords are: proposal, CCaSS, Americas,
technology, advisory. Possible good title: Americas Advisory proposal
regarding CCaSS in technology January 2012.
► Next, write an abstract (summary). If you work with a stakeholder, ask this
person to create the abstract. The abstract should summarize the content of
the document. Include the most important keywords you determined
earlier.
Note: If you have a good abstract that matches the document content, it is
likely to show up in the search results. A good abstract will also influence
the relevance of a document, determining how high in the result list it
appears.
Example of the title, abstract and
attachment/body fields in a CKR

The document properties are a powerful tool for helping to increase the relevance of a particular document. Many templates within
Ernst & Young are frequently reused, but often the document properties are never updated.
Open document properties in any Microsoft document:
► Select the Office button in the upper left corner.
► Go to Prepare in the left column.
► Click Properties in the right section.
There are three fields you need to complete/check:
► Author: This field should contain the name of the person who authored the document.
► Title: Enter the title of the document.
► Keywords: Enter any keywords that a user might use to search for this document. Insert the keywords you have created earlier
in step 1 to optimize the core content. Examples might include the type of document (proposal, risk matrix, training), the
engagement or project name, or any other keyword that someone might search.
You may complete the other fields, but rules for these fields have not yet been defined.
3. Verify, define and change document properties of your attachment
Check the document properties and metadata, if possible. This is especially important for all
Microsoft Office files and PDFs:
► Ensure that the author’s name matches the source of the material.
► Correct the title field, if needed, based on the keyword list from step 1.
► Add each of the desired keywords and phrases to the keywords field.
► Save the document as a single attachment. Don’t combine multiple attachments in a
single zip file.
► For PDFs, if the information is incorrect, have the person who created the PDF recreate it
with correctly edited properties.
Don’t use titles such as “Proposal PowerPoint” or
abstracts containing no relevant information about the
document.
Do use titles such as “Americas CCaSS Proposals …
fees sanitized.pptx” accompanied with a descriptive
abstract stating the context of the document. Ideally, the
most important keyword(s) from the keyword list should
be mentioned in the attachment title.
Note: Always consider if you download the file to your
desktop and come across it a month later, would you
immediately know what it is about?
Attachments play a surprisingly strong role in improving the search results because the search engine goes through the attachments to
pull up the most relevant results. Make sure the attachment title is descriptive and catches/summarizes the subject matter.
2. Optimize the attachment
Note: You should clear out any values in the Notes section of a PowerPoint presentation that may not be relevant, such as
content that might have been relevant to the original version of the presentation but is no longer valid in the current version, or

Type your text here – Helvetica Neue
40pt

Based on the date, you
should…

City of Gothenburg:
User interface

Region Västra Götaland:
User interface

0-results
200 most use search terms

Region Västra Götaland:
Statistics

All this + time and
persistence

“Big Data lives – enterprise
search is dead!” Really?
Source: IntranetFocus

The Big Data Benchmarked
Corporation?
Source: VINT

Source: IntranetFocus
Date -

The silver bullet of Enterprise Search

“Enterprise search is the practice
of making content from multiple
enterprise-type sources, such as
databases and intranets,
searchable to a deﬁned audience.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_search

SEO 
@jcolman: How to Build SEO into Content
Strategy

Building the business case

CIO.com: How to Evaluate Enterprise Search
Findability Blog: Building a Business Case for
Enterprise Search

Information Architecture and
taxonomies
Early & Associates: 10 Common Mistakes
When Developing Taxonomies
Tagging
Presentation: Social Tagging, Folksonomies
Controlled Vocabularies

The Enterprise Search
and Findability Report
2013

ENTERPRISE SEARCH

by MARTIN WHITE

@intranetfocus

SEARCH ANALYTICS FOR YOUR SITE

Conversations with Your Customers

by LOUIS ROSENFELD

@louisrosenfeld

7 tips for better enterprise search

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (16)

Viewers also liked

Viewers also liked (20)

Similar to 7 tips for better enterprise search

Similar to 7 tips for better enterprise search (15)

More from Kristian Norling

More from Kristian Norling (11)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

7 tips for better enterprise search