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RSS feedsNot that long ago a search engine merely had to throw a list of results at a user to justify its existence. Today, there is just too much information online, whether on the internet or within a subscriber-accessed news database like Factiva. As a result, the modern search engine must produce not only results but a set of leads to further results. Factiva has rarely struggled to produce results, but with Search 2.0, the news aggregator has developed an extremely powerful search tool.
Currently, Search 2.0 is in beta format, the popular method of putting a service out into the market and letting real-life users test it and see what’s right and wrong with it. Internet-based services are increasingly developed using beta-testing, and Factiva recognises that this method of going to market gives it some room for manoeuvre.
Dennis Cahill, product VP at Factiva, says: “The length of the beta-testing period will depend on the feedback we get from users, but we expect to have completed testing by the end of quarter one.”
Initial feedback in the first week has shown that 25% of users are not sure about the News Clusters of tag clouds, so that may need some further work.
Search 2.0 is aimed at users without significant training in search skills. “We have the best search engine for information professionals, so they will not be offered this new search engine,” Cahill says, adding that they will still get some of the graphical functionality.
Search 2.0 is aimed squarely at the end-user in an organisation – people who, Cahill believes, do not have Boolean searching skills. The end-user market has boomed for Factiva, he adds.
The Search 2.0 engine is based on Factiva Discovery technology, which is a set of off-the-shelf tools including technology from Fast Search & Transfer and Factiva’s own taxonomy. Cahill says Search 2.0 incorporates technology from a dozen suppliers. “This is a bunch of text-mining tools which we have applied to two very different scenarios: reputation management and search,” he says.
Eye-candy extras
So what is Search 2.0 like to use? Well, it couldn’t be easier. A simple keyword search page is your entry point, and from the keywords you will enjoy a very new results page experience. As you’d expect, the hit page is dominated by a list of results, but to the right is an eye-catching column of graphs and tags dubbed the Discovery Pane that let you explore further.
Here you will find, from top to bottom, a graph for the date range of stories on the subject you requested, followed by News Clusters (a set of related tags in a cloud formation) and finally a series of graphs that allow you to search by industry, company, subject and source.
The News Clusters section is probably the Discovery Pane element that will get you really thinking – and that is its objective. It displays the most common related tags in a larger print size than the less common ones and is extremely wide-ranging. For example, a search for “biofuel” generates News Clusters tags on American lung cancer, cleaner burning, biofuel makers, commission, palm oil, sulphur diesel, ethanol, and production.
Beneath the News Clusters section, a range of related subject areas are grouped around graphs for the most common occurrences, which include companies, industries and subjects.
Content in the main results panel comes from three main sources – newspapers, magazines and newswires – and as a result there are four tabs for selecting content types: the three news sources plus an All tab to select the lot. You can sort results by relevance or date. Cahill says that websites, pictures and blogs will be added to Search 2.0 in the near future.
Search results are displayed for easy scanning, with search terms bolded out throughout. The results page features the headline, three lines of text from the story and details of the publication in blue – including publication title, word count, whether it is in English language and the date of publication. Clicking through to the story takes you to the digitised copy that anyone who has used an aggregator service before will be familiar with.
Factiva has also added in a lot of useful help aids. A search for oil giant BP, for example, generates an impressive set of results, but Factiva goes a step further, and will ask if you’re looking for information on BP plc, restricting the results to content on that company if you are.
Search 2.0 will win over a lot of people. Factiva has hit the nail on the head with this search engine: it has the right look and feel to encourage users to interact with it rather than going out on to the internet, while the help functions are intuitive without being annoying. There haven’t been any major leaps forward in news aggregator usability for a while, but Search 2.0 could put a lot of pressure on other players in the market.
