October 23, 2009

7 Google Updates: Custom Search, AdWords API, Maps, Search Appliance and More

Google had another busy week pushing out updates. That's really no surprise considering Apple released product refreshes and Microsoft released Windows 7. Google hasn't let any major update from any competitor go by without their own news and this week was no different.

We've already covered Google getting a deal with Twitter (similar to Bing's deal with Twitter) as well as a new social search experiment set up in Google Labs.

Here are 7 updates that are slightly minor but you'll still want to know about:

Custom Search is now available for mobile search experiences on smartphone and higher-end devices. Google will even host your mobile-optimized custom search pages for you, or you can host it on your mobile site.

AdWords API has a new version that includes asynchronous calls, keyword and placement ideas, and a location extensions preview.

Google Maps for Mobile has introduced layers for Blackberry users.

Google Search Appliance, an enterprise search server, released an update that includes a Self-Learning Scorer.

Google Friend Connect has a new Wordpress plugin.

Webmaster Central has new instructions for verifying a Blogger blog in Webmaster Tools.

Google Reader added Popular Items and Personalized Ranking features.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 12:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

August 20, 2009

Google Enterprise Labs Launches Side-By-Side Search Tool

If you're using Google Enterprise to fuel your search, then a new feature can help you tweak the search results you're getting. The feature is called Side-by-Side search and it's been released in Enterprise Labs.

You can use the tool for a variety of comparisons including existing search with Google Search Appliance or two different back=end Google Search Appliance settings.

With side-by-side you can test Google's enterprise search against other company's offerings. I'm guessing Google's confident enough to think they'll consistently win on the comparisons.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 3:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 3, 2009

Google Search Appliance 6.0 Searches Documents by the Billions

Google is releasing a new version of the software that runs on Search Appliance. Version 6.0 can search billions of documents. They're also releasing a new hardware Search Appliance that can search 30 million documents.

Google Search Appliance can be deployed to search billions of documents in 5 racks of about 10-12 GSA's each. A little over a year ago, it took a 5 box rack to search 10 million documents. So, you can see how the progress is coming fast and furious.

Google Search Appliance is an enterprise solution that enables companies to search internal documents or provide site search for websites.

The announcement of Version 6.0 comes with a Google-made video that has the look and feel of a Spanish-language soap opera:

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 19, 2008

Google Enables Cross-Language Search for Enterprise Search Appliance

If your business is global, then you likely have many documents in foreign languages. In order to help employees find documents in languages other than their first, Google has enabled cross-language searching for enterprise customers using the Google Search Appliance.

Queries will be passed through a translation engine which will enable search in several languages. Users can choose the document to be returned to them in any of the available languages.

Google Mini and Google Search Appliance owners can head to this link at Enterprise Labs to check out the new feature.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

August 6, 2008

Google Updates Search Appliance, Now Holds 10 Million Documents

Google has released a new version of their hardware product, Search Appliance. The new version can hold up to 10 million documents in a single box, as much as a previouis version held in a 5 box rack.

The box holds Google software that powers search services and runs on Dell storage hardware.

Other new features in the updated version include greater encryption powers and notifications of new documents stored by colleagues.

via Reuters

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

July 14, 2006

Microsoft: "Enterprise Search Is Our Business" (It's Not) & Google Can't Have It (They Don't)

Microsoft to Google: Hands off enterprise search from News.com and a similar report from The Register both cite Microsoft Chief Operating Office Kevin Turner declaring "enterprise search is our business, it's our house and Google is not going to take that business."

Gosh -- I though enterprise search was Autonomy's business, Autonomy's house. This recent Investors Business Daily article had Autonomy as the "clear leader" in enterprise search, followed by FAST, IBM and then Google. Microsoft isn't even mentioned -- not once.

Other reports (InformationWeek, InternetWeek) talk about Turner saying Microsoft is strong in the enterprise space overall. Sure. But enterprise search as Microsoft's business? And Google's trying to take it? That doesn't wash.

Google's been providing a dedicated enterprise search product, the Google Search Appliance, since 2002. They also offered hosted site search solutions from before that. Enterprise search isn't something Google's suddenly decided to do, just because Microsoft is doing it. The same is true for other companies that fall under Turner's ire:

Those people are not going to be allowed to take food off of our plate, because that is what they are intending to do.

In reality, Microsoft seems to have no serious enterprise search house at the moment, and if anyone's trying to grab food off the plate, it pretty much sounds like it's Microsoft doing the grabbing.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:36 AM | Permalink

June 22, 2006

Google Search Appliance Now Available In Australia and New Zealand

The Google Search Appliance is now available in Australia and in New Zealand. The Google Search Appliance starts at $74,486 AUD in Australia and starts at $87,702 NZD in New Zealand or $30,000 US in America. The full release can be found here.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:23 AM | Permalink

February 15, 2006

Google Teams Up with BearingPoint to Increase Sales of Search Appliances

Google partners with BearingPoint from News.com covers a partnership that will enable Google to better support the Google Search Appliance and the Google Desktop for Enterprise software.

The deal will not only increase awareness and sales of the product but also enable Google to offer support contracts of $10,000 or more per year for "training and developer consultation" services.

Dave Girouard, general manager for Google Enterprise said that BearingPoint was the largest partner of Google's "Enterprise Professional Program" that enabled third party companies to support the products, since Google was not staffed to do so internally.

Google's official press release can be found here.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:28 AM | Permalink

January 12, 2006

Google Offers New Versions of Google Mini Search Appliance, Fast Search and NY Times Company Announce Deal

Two enterprise search notes today. One from Google and the other from Fast Search and Transfer.

First, Elinor Mills reports that Google is offering two new versions of the Google Mini.

One of the new Google Minis will be priced at just under $6,000 and will be able to search up to 200,000 documents on corporate Web sites and intranets. The second will be priced at just under $9,000 and will be able to handle 300,000 documents, said Rajen Sheth, product manager of Google's enterprise division.

Next, Fast Search and Transfer has announced a few new clients for their enterprise search technology. We now learn that the company has just signed deals with The New York Times Company (all of their newspapers including the Boston Globe and International Herald Tribune) and the MediaNews Group (53 newspapers and sites including the Denver Post, InsideBayArea.com, Los Angeles Daily News, and Oakland Tribune). The NY Times deal calls for Fast search technology to be used across the organization including public web sites while MediaNews will use Fast for their public web sites. I blogged about several other Fast deals, including one with Citysearch, a few weeks ago.

Posted by Gary Price at 4:04 PM | Permalink

January 11, 2006

National Stereotypes, Search Activity, Package Tracking & More All Mapped

Thanks to Philipp Lenssen and Nacho Hernandez for alerting us to few new uses of Google Maps and other mapped info. Track your packages, see how people are searching across the world in light and what people think about national stereotypes, all mapped.

+ PackageMapper.com. This is not your run of the mill package traking service but actually allows you to see the routing of your FedEx, UPS, or USPS package. Cool!

+ Google is offering a map that highlights various users of the Google Mini around the United States and Canada. You can view users by industry or all users. Click and you'll receive a pop-up with the name of the company, info on how the mini is used and a testimonial from a person at that company. An impressive use of Google Maps as a marketing tool.

+ The Prejudice Map is a service that Philipp Lenssen has created that combines Google Web Search with a Google Map. What does the map show? For each country, Lenssen has run the Google search, "xxx are known for *" (Examples, "Australians are known for *", "Canadians are known for *", and many other countries and then placed some of the terms he found on the map. No one can ever claim that Philipp doesn't find interesting uses for Google search results.

+ Finally, GB points to this fascinating animated visualization (via Information Aesthetics) that animates daily Google search query distribution across world in 2003." The data comes from Google Labs. I would love to see how this would compare with query distribution last year.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:40 AM | Permalink

November 22, 2005

Google Mini Security Issue Patched

Via WebProNews, Metasploit explains how it discovered flaws in the Google Mini enterprise search appliance that could be abused to do "cross-site scripting, file discovery, service enumeration and arbitrary command execution." The flaw was reported to Google apparently privately earlier this year in June, a patch issued August and news of the issue released yesterday. Metasploit praised Google for responding immediately and being helpful through the fix and testing process.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:29 AM | Permalink

November 8, 2005

Google Giving Away Google Mini With Google Search Enterprise Purchase

So a correction to my earlier post in this spot (the original still below for those who care). Google's got a new deal going on now where those who purchase a Google Search Appliance to replace an existing solution are also given a Google Mini for free. That's basically a smaller scale version of the GSA (more on the difference is here). So not quite the potential sweetener to get people to dump their existing enterprise search solution that I thought before.

Original Post: Google gives so many other products away for free that I guess it shouldn't be a surprise it has decided to do the same with its enterprise search product, the Google Search Appliance. The company has just announced that anyone that wants to give up their existing enterprise search tool can get the basic version of the search appliance, the Google Mini. You've got to the end of the year to do so via this page. The real question will be, will they give anyone any version of the appliance for free next year, hoping somehow to make money off of ads shown on enterprise search. Wouldn't surprise me in the least.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:53 PM | Permalink

October 31, 2005

IBM, Google Partner on Enterprise Search

IBM plans to integrate its OmniFind corporate search system with Google's free desktop search and make the package available to enterprise search customers. Infoworld reports:

By linking the IBM enterprise search system with Google's PC search tool, users will be able to search for information not only on corporate repositories, such as databases, content management systems, applications and the open Web, but also on their desktops.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 2:47 PM | Permalink

October 6, 2005

Google Enterprise OK For US Government Secrets?

Google: Fit for intelligence work? from Federal Computer Week looks at Google's enterprise search being used by some US government networks and some experts questioning whether the technology is "unfit" for classified work. But some Google enterprise "teammates," info tech firms trained to develop Google enterprise and bring it into security settings, say it's OK.

When one expert says, "For those things that Google does find, it will rank them based on popularity," it doesn't sound like they understand the enterprise product.

Yes, popularity is key in Google web search results. But it's not really an issue to my knowledge with non-web enterprise data. However, the point of Google enterprise not really being a tool for spotting patterns sounds right.

FYI, Gary noted last year that Convera has been tapped by agencies such as the CIA for search needs. The CIA tapped into Inktomi technology back in 2002. In 2001, CIA-backed In-Q-Tel picked Stratify to help spot patterns.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:19 AM | Permalink

April 20, 2005

Google Search Appliance Now Being Sold in Japan

Google's enterprise search technology (aka Google Search Appliance) is now available in Japan via a reseller according to an IDG News Service article.

The system will be offered in Japan through reseller Mitsui & Co. Ltd. and will cost around ¥6 million (US$56,216) for the GB-1001 model, said Kaori Saito, a spokeswoman for Google's Japanese unit...The price is about double that of the unit in the U.S., where it costs $30,000. The higher price includes software licensing fees and services including network integration, setting and maintenance, said Norio Kozuka [cq], a spokesman for Mitsui. Such services are often requested by Japanese clients, he said.

Posted by Gary Price at 9:41 AM | Permalink

March 28, 2005

Desktop Search, Google Enterprise, and the U.S. Goverment

A couple of interesting reads from Federal Computer Week.

First, the article: The search is on, looks at the many obstacles desktop search tools have in getting a place on government workers desktops. That said, the next article reports that the USDA is testing Google Desktop Search.

Second, Google turns up fed business reports on how several government agencies including Health and Human Services, the Department of Transportation, and the USDA, are successfully using Google's Search Appliance. The article also mentions a few issues that one user from the USDA had with the product.

At the seminar, during which federal officials offered feedback to Google representatives, [Chris] Niedermayer [USDAs associate chief information officer for electronic government] did note several kinks. He complained about the lack of phone support and documentation for the companys GB-1001 model, which handles up to 1.5 million documents.

Posted by Gary Price at 4:51 PM | Permalink

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