Information Architecture
INF 213
Karen Sheehy
Student 11186175
Part A – IA Tool Evaluation
Google Search Appliance Tool Evaluation
The search function on a webpage is the information architecture tool that is called upon when a
user’s own navigation attempts have failed. Search engines can be used to search an organisation’s
intranet as part of a knowledge management system and as a search engine feature within a
document rich website.
The Google Search Appliance(GSA) is a hardware device and accompanying software application that
is designed to perform fast, effective searches of internal networks using established Google
algorithms. It features an easy-to-use customisable admin console reducing the need for technical
staff (Google, 2014). GSA crawls and indexes the nominated folders and creates metadata for the
files within. It can search HTML content and over 200 file types including PDFs and word documents.
It can index up to 100 million documents with scalability to combine devices and index billions of
documents.
The GSA is a brand leader in the marketplace because of its adaptability, ease of use and the
recognition of the Google brand name. It features keyword based searches that present relevant
matches in order in a familiar interface that users find authoritative (Information Week , 2008).
Similar to Google Websearch, it uses synonyms whilst searching and has a people search function
and a self learning scorer, which allows it to improve its matches automatically. (Google, 2014)
The GSA is used effectively by the University of Chicago to simplify searching of the documents
loaded onto its four domains and improve the user experience. It continuously crawls these domains and
includes documents in search results approximately 30 minutes after uploading. (University of Chicago: IT services, 2014)
Figure 1 – The Google Search Appliance operating within the web interface of the University of Chicago IT Services
website (University of Chicago: IT services, 2014)
The Vanderbilt University uses the GSA to crawl and index over twenty domains including all
Vanderbilt University and medical centre pages. The webpage handles over 300,000 searches per
month and they have an inventory of over 4 million documents. Whilst improving the user
experience on the Vanderbilt website, it is estimated that the GSA saved $750,000 on storage costs
and additional server expenses (Google, n.d.).
Figure 2 - Vanderbilt University uses the Google Search Appliance to index over 4 million documents (Vanderbilt
University, 2014)
When compared with similar search engine devices like Autonomy IDOL and Microsoft FAST, the
GSA is a well priced and easy solution requiring little technical support once implemented. A
technical disadvantage is that the hardware must be returned to Google for even simple repairs,
creating significant downtime (Information Week , 2008).
GSA pricing is based on the number of documents indexed and this affects its affordability. An
inevitable increase in price should be considered before implementation as many organisations
significantly increase their document database in a relatively short period of time.
As with any off the shelf IT solution, it may not be suitable for all environments and lacks some of
customization options of its competitors (Searchblox, 2014). Document types .csv and twitter feeds
are not supported and therefore cannot be searched. The GSA is optimal for searching HTML
content using the established Google page ranking algorithm. However, a page’s ranking is
determined by how many other documents link to it and as PDF’s and word documents are unlikely
to link to other documents this affects the relevance sorting algorithm.
References
Google. (n.d.). Case Study: Google Apps Education Edition and Google Search Appliance. Retrieved
May 27, 2014, from Google docs:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_LkaBW4bQI6kSoyoZrTCZDaxxzNd23dIu1kHixFXXs/edit?pli=1
Google. (2014). Google Search Appliance. Retrieved May 20, 2014, from Google Enterprise Search :
https://docs-googlecom.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/a/google.com/viewer?url=https://www.google.com/intl/en/enterp
rise/search/files/btd_gsa_datasheet-7.2.pdf
Information Week . (2008, Oct 3). Information Week Government: Connecting the government
technology community. Retrieved May 20, 2014, from Put to the test: Google search
appliance Version 5: http://www.informationweek.com/applications/put-to-the-test-googlesearch-appliance-version-5/d/d-id/1065500?page_number=1
Searchblox. (2014, May 1). SearchBlox 8 vs Google Search Appliance. Retrieved May 20, 2014, from
SearchBlox Software: http://www.searchblox.com/searchblox-8-vs-google-search-appliance
University of Chicago: IT services. (2014). Google search appliance. Retrieved May 27, 2014, from
University of Chicago: IT Services: https://itservices.uchicago.edu/page/google-searchappliance
Vanderbilt University. (2014). Vanderbilt University. Retrieved May 25, 2014, from Vanderbilt
University: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/