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Tag: Google Search Appliance

  • Google Search Appliance Gets Big Update With Version 7.2

    Google has launched a major update to the Google Search Appliance with version 7.2, aimed at making it easier for employees and customers to find documents and easier for businesses to organize data.

    The new version comes with improvements to entity management.

    “GSA 7.0 introduced entity recognition, which helps businesses categorize unstructured content by extracting entities—attributes like date, author and product type—from documents,” explains product manager Brent VerWeyst. “With GSA 7.2, you get a chance to test and tweak your entities before indexing begins. This helps ensure that the entities you choose and apply will work best for your organization’s needs.”

    “Companies rely on GSA to make all their files discoverable from a single search box, no matter where they live,” he adds. “It does this with the help of components called connectors, which link GSA to various data sources and index their contents. In GSA 7.2, we’ve made the connector framework more scalable and flexible. Customers and partners can develop and improve custom connectors more easily, helping GSA become a truly universal information hub.”

    The new version also adds “wildcard search,” so you can search for items without having to know the exact query you’re looking for. Google gives the example that you’re searching for part number 3728, and you can simply type “part number 37” and a wildcard character like an * to perform the query. The point is you don’t have to remember complicated terms or long numbers.

    The new GSA also adds a redesigned admin console, better language support and advanced sorting.

    You can download the update from the Google Support Portal.

    Image via Google

  • Google Launches A New Google Search Appliance

    Google Search Appliance has been around for about a decade, and today, the box has received a new update with version 7.0. This version adds universal search, refined relevance signals and some other bells and whistles.

    “The GSA 7.0 helps you find information stored anywhere in your organization, whether you’re using a desktop, smartphone or tablet,” says Matthew Eichner, General Manager, Enterprise Search at Google. “Administrators can easily add content sources from secure storage, cloud services or the public web and social networking sites. GSA 7.0 also provides Google-quality search for SharePoint 2010, making for a more simple and intuitive, all-in-one search experience.”

    “Users are happy when they get relevant results returned quickly,” says Eichner. “At Google, speed and relevance are the core components of a great search experience. With GSA 7.0, we’ve refined our relevance signals so that the most useful information for each particular user is always easy to find. Assisted navigation makes it easy to refine search results, and requires no manual configuration from administrators. Entity Recognition automatically identifies and suggests content you might be looking for, and GSA 7.0 also harnesses the ‘wisdom of crowds,’ allowing employees to add their own search results.”

    The new GSA also comes with document preview, Google Translate, updated language capabilities, a new interface and improved scale. You can view thumbnails and flip through full-screen document previews alongside search results. Search results can be displayed in over 60 languages. According to Google, a single rack of GSAs could now fit the equivalent of the entire Google.com index in 2000 (a billion pages).

  • Google Search Appliance Connects To Cloud

    Google Search Appliance Connects To Cloud

    The odd-looking yellow box that Google markets as the Google Search Appliance is now better than ever.  Google’s announced several new features, including improved cloud connectivity and a people search option.

    Cloud Connect is definitely the main attraction here.  It introduces the ability to search content stored within Google Docs and Google Sites, along with Twitter and other sites.

    A post Google saw fit to publish on both the Official Google Enterprise Blog and the Official Google Blog explained that this "brings ‘universal search’ to another level, with more accessible business systems and content now spanning from cloud to ground."

    As for People Search, the post claimed that it "makes it easy to find experts and contact coworkers who are related to a search query, right from the search results page."

    Finally, there’s a Dynamic Navigation feature for the sake of making powerful searches easier to conduct, improved support for Microsoft Sharepoint 2010, and a reliability tweak.

    These changes should help Google convince more than a few additional companies to invest in its little yellow box.  Also, if anyone’s on the fence, it’s possible some other upgrades are on the way, considering the new version of the Google Search Appliance is labeled 6.8 and 7.0 should be in the pipeline.

  • Google Makes Google Search Appliance More Accessible with OpenSearch

    Google announced today that it has integrated the Google Search Appliance with the OpenSearch protocol, which is a collection of formats for sharing search results. OpenSearch can be used to describe a search engine, so that it can be used by search client applications.

    "People should have the power to conduct searches from everywhere," says Alexander Kerschhofer with the Google Search Appliance team. "This is why we provide users with numerous options beyond Google.com, such as typing in a search query directly in the address bar in Google Chrome, or through Google Toolbar, or Google Desktop."

    Using Google Search Appliance from the Browser"However, when it comes to searching information on their corporate intranet, most users’ choices are limited," he continues. "Corporate users typically have to go to a special URL or open up a special portal application to search their intranet."

    The Google Search Appliance’s integration of OpenSearch means users can access Google Search Appliance directly from the browser, or from Windows Explorer. These are just a couple of examples.

    Essentially, the more platforms that play nice with OpenSearch, the more options, Google Search Appliance users will have for accessing it.

    More information about OpenSearch can be found here.