Google Actually Works. Other Search Technologies, Don’t.

Someone on the WebSanDiego.org List said something very like what this article — City Ogles Google Impact: The city of San Diego’s search appliance left employees and citizens hanging. Then it turned to Google has to say. The essence was this — “Why bother with site architecture and information design? All you have to do is put all your documents up and then let Google search them and bam, there’s your navigational scheme.” With a technology like google, information design becomes secondary. People only want to find what they’re looking for. Google is proven in this regard. A quote:

“The city had been running an older original-equipment-manufacturer version of Verity Inc.’s information-retrieval software, and it wasn’t getting the results it needed, either for its citizens or its employees. For instance, the public would get no results when it entered the word “maps” when looking for directions to city facilities, and employees had little success with terms such as “GroupWise” (the Novell E-mail software used by city workers) and “E-Pay” (a tool that provides intranet access to direct-deposit check stubs). When the city asked Verity how to solve the problem, the vendor suggested an upgrade to its K2 knowledge-management suite, as well as a taxonomy engine.”

(via http://boingboing.net )