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Federated Search for Google Search Appliance

May 23rd, 2008

MuseGlobal and Adhere Solutions recently announced a federated search extendor, the All Access Connector, for the Google Search Appliance and Google Mini. Sol at Federated Search Blog raises some good questions about how relevancy is calculated for search results. One point is that Google’s PageRank probably won’t fare well in the enterprise. He says it this way in a previous post:

…the popular search engines perform full text searches of unstructured text but enterprise content is much more structured than content in the Internet at large, it often contains fielded data in databases, and it is often hierarchically organized. Federated search vendors that want to sell into the enterprise need to consider this important difference.

True. However, Google isn’t new to enterprise search and they’re quick to point out that the algorithms they use for web content aren’t the same as for the GSA. Nevertheless, I am curious to know if it’s Google or MuseGlobal doing the relevancy math.

Sol also makes an interesting prediction about the impact the product will have on the market:

For better or worse, I think this offering will get many potential customers to view federated search as a commodity. Thus, it will force the high-end federated search vendors to work even harder than they do now to differentiate themselves from their low-end competitors. I can see it now: prospective customers will start using Google as a reference for product comparisons and will expect vendors to provide cheap and simple solutions.

My information, including an article at Information Today, says the AAC will run, in most cases, at least $50,000 plus over two years. That’s in addition to the cost of the Google appliance. I’m not sure which competitors or price tags Sol considers low-end in the federated search space. I wouldn’t consider this low-end. In my experience, such a price point might actually hit a sweet spot where only a couple of vendors exist now, especially for organizations that have already invested in Google search.

Entry Filed under: innovation, libraries, metasearch, trends