New Google Search Tools Target Enterprise Users

The first, Side-by-Side, is a search comparison tool that lets users test and rate results from two different search queries on the same body of data to see which gives the better results, according to a post on Google's official blog.

"Employees can then vote on their preferred results, by choosing the Policy A or B buttons, and the administrator can then use that information to choose and set up the right search solution for the business," wrote Google engineers Michael Parker and Salmaan Rashid in the blog post.

If IT administrators want to conduct a full relevance test for results of multiple search queries, they can feed in whatever queries they'd like to test, wrote Cyrus Mistry, product manager for Google Enterprise, in another blog post.

"All of the Side-by-Side administration can be done with a simple Web interface, and admins can anonymize each panel, so users don't know which search engine or setting powers which set of results," Mistry wrote. "Essentially, admins can now test any search products they want and provide their organization with the setting or solution that employees rate highest."

Also new are connectors for the Google Search Appliance. Now available are an update to major content management systems and a new Google Search Appliance connector for Salesforce.com data, allowing users to include sales data in their search results.

"In the enterprise, search engines crawl more than just the Internet -- they're also searching across all sorts of data stores and offline content," Parker and Rashid wrote. "Connectors integrate data from all different kinds of file and content systems (like SharePoint, FileNet, Documentum) so an employee searching their company intranet can see a single, unified search results page, even if the results are drawn from a wide variety of company data systems."

The Salesforce connector provides sales, marketing and customer support personnel instant access to information they need every day., wrote Jeff Ling, product manager for Google Enterprise, in another Google blog post.

"Additionally, given that the GSA already searches content in Google Apps, and now searches Salesforce, our customers know our unrivaled commitment to searching content wherever it resides -- on-premise, or in the cloud," Ling wrote.

Both tools are available in Google Enterprise Labs at Google.com