Extending from my previous article on how you can get your company to get a better Enterprise Search Engine for free! Today I want to talk about how you can get the most out of what you have got now.
Even though the type of enterprise search engine available varies significant and the implementation can be quite different from company to company, the fundamental of how to use a search engine more effectively are pretty much the same, whether you have a portal based search engine on your intranet or a specialist search engine for documents, the following tips should make you a better searcher and increase your productivity!
1. Get to Know all the Search Engines: Company typically have more than one search engine, starting with the intranet search engine. Other departments might have created their own specialist search engine that you might find useful. Ask your IT department and uncover all the search engines that you should have access to
2. Read the help page! Every implementation of a corporate search engine would have its own set of features and capabilities. Spending the time and going over the help page is never going to hurt you.
3. Get to know the advanced search syntax: One of the first advanced search function you should get familiar with is the advanced syntax options that available to you. Things like how to to “AND” and “OR” and can you use things like NOT to exclude certain keyword.
4. Get to know what’s in the search engine repository: What type of content? what format are they? It always a good idea on what is actually indexed by the search engine that you are using since if it is not indexed by the search engine, it ain’t gonna show up in the search result !
5. Request for training – Surprisingly, company often spends a large amount of money implementing their corporate search engine and then forgets about training their user on how to effectively use it and get the most of their million dollar IT investment. It’s a shame and its up to the users such as you to change that.
6. Try Desktop Search: Often you have already searched, found and downloaded the document you are looking for previously. Why not avoid the awful Intranet Search Engine all together and search your own desktop with one of these wonderful Desktop Search Engine.
Do you have any ideas or experience you would like to share ?
Also feel free to start your own discussion at the Search 1.x Community Forum!
Email This Post To A Friend!Related Posts:
