No Enterprise Search works like Google!

You would like an enterprise search that works as well as Google? Why are enterprise search tools never as good as Google?

Stop! Enterprise Search is not supposed to work like Google!

Issues with enterprise-wide search? Search made easy!

Here’s the problem with that statement: No, you actually don’t want your Enterprise Search to work like Google. If you were sitting at your desk and got 85 million search results for every query, you would curse your system – and I would agree with you. The difference lies in the data being searched, or rather in the results the user expects. With an Enterprise Search query, the user usually needs a specific document or a particular email. With Google, people usually search for more general, less specific information.

For example: When I entered my query on Google, I got my dozens of search results with adequate options on the first page. Nice and good, but Enterprise Search doesn’t work like that, because Enterprise Search curates information that has already been filtered out within the company. So what I want to find now is, for example, an invoice for my “flight to Berlin” that I took last November. When I enter these details into my Enterprise Search tool, it makes no sense for me to be spit out every flight to Berlin that all employees have taken over the past few years. That would definitely not make me happy.

What Should Enterprise Search Be Able to Do?

Do you understand now? The big challenge for every company is to find the right balance within its Enterprise Search. How much is too much? How much is too little? Each organization must decide this individually for itself. How much money does our Enterprise Search save, does it even bring us added value? Managing search results is a key success factor for every company. If I had to spend three hours every day searching through my search results, that would, in my opinion, not be a sensible use of my work capacity. I think my boss would agree with that too… So the next time you think “I wish our Enterprise Search was a bit more like Google”, don’t forget that you would probably get back 85 million results that you would then have to search through yourself…