Cloud services offer boost to search relevancy

The cloud offers a standardised way to deliver information

Organisations should make the most of cloud and context-aware services to improve external and internal search results, according to Gartner.

The analyst firm said in a new report that companies could see search improvements by exploiting contextual awareness, making them much more relevant to potential customers and users.

The advice is pitched at marketers, e-commerce firms and companies that want to make their products, information or services available to a wider audience.

Gartner explained that such organisations could learn from the efforts of social networking sites, which turn the information derived from users into something positive for the bottom line.

"The way that context can feed improved search capabilities and relevancy makes cloud computing particularly valuable to companies that provide informational services to workers or customers via search," said Whit Andrews, a vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner.

"What the cloud offers, in addition to the promise of reduced pricing, is a standardised means of delivering information to augment queries that can improve search results significantly."

It also offers "a source of rich profile data" that helps to set the context for individual searches, he added.

The main thrust, according to Gartner, should be in the direction of the cloud and away from in-house search efforts. Cloud-based search services should at least be considered by 2015, but this will require serious decisions, particularly about security.

"In the past, search was overwhelmingly managed on-premise because the indices that search engines use to select results for users generally contain significant amounts of sensitive information, and executives baulked at allo wing such data to exit the premises and enter the cloud," said Andrews.

"However, inclinations to allow sensitive data, such as email and discoverable information in e-discovery processes, to enter the cloud are changing companies' attitudes toward such approaches."

Businesses that have taken on such search services have already reaped benefits, Andrews added, and the application of contextual information improves search in and outside the enterprise. Internally, improved search results can save money and increase productivity.

"Knowing what role a searcher has in a company, his or her location, and what interactions he has previously had with the search engine, are all elements that may be used to provide better search results," he said.

"Improving results reduces the time spent searching and increases the value of searches, which results in quantifiable improvements in how some workers, such as customer service representatives or procurement officers, conduct their duties."