Google came out with an interesting concept last week when it released the Google Search Wiki. It enables you to take the standard set of results and move the ones you like best to the top of the results lists. What's more you can leave notes about why you like or dislike a site, and the notes are then available to the public. To be sure, there is room for lots of manipulation on the open web, but this could prove quite useful in an enterprise search environment where the universe of results is going to be much smaller.
Some search vendors like Oracle's Secure Enterprise Search [1] product include the ability for IT to set certain results at the top of the list, but this could put the power to place search results in the hands of the end user, which is very powerful. Picture being able to put your favorite presentation at the top of a set of search results.
Further, you could attach a note to it, giving you the ability to let other folks know why you like it, and why it makes a good template for other customers in the same vertical market. It's important to understand that the notes are public, but the way you manipulate the results is only available in your personal set of results. Whether this can work at all on the open web is still open to question, but it should be interesting to see what happens if Google makes this available in its enterprise search products.
For more information:
- see this article [2]
Related Articles:
Google news from FierceContentManagement [3]
Links:
[1] http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/oses
[2] http://battellemedia.com/archives/004716.php
[3] http://www.fiercecontentmanagement.com/tags/google