Google Search Appliance software version 6.0
Posted June 2009
The Google Search Appliance enables you to provide universal search to your users. You can get the most from your Google Search Appliance by using some or all of its many features to fine-tune and enhance universal search. Become familiar with the Google Search Appliance's features by reading this document and apply those features that best suit your search solution.
This document describes how to deploy a Google Search Appliance in an enterprise to offer universal search to your users. This document is intended for anyone involved in deploying a Google Search Appliance, including those who are responsible for the following tasks:
The concepts, instructions, and advice in this guide are intended to provide general information only. Because organizations have a wide variety of Information Technology (IT) infrastructures, the methods that you ultimately use to set up your search appliance might differ from what is described in this guide. Therefore, use this guide as a starting point to help plan and manage your universal search implementation.
Although Google recommends that you read this entire guide, you don't have to. Depending on your organization's infrastructure, you goals, and your own experience, you can use this guide as a handbook and just read the sections that are applicable to your implementation.
Google offers a comprehensive library of public documentation about the Google Search Appliance. These documents contain in-depth information about how to use the features and functions described in this document.
Read more about the Google Search Appliance features and functions that interest you by clicking the links within this document to navigate to relevant documents in the library of public Google Search Appliance documentation.
Universal search is the ability to search all content in an enterprise through a single search box. Although content sources might reside in different locations, such as on a corporate network, on a desktop, or on the World Wide Web, they appear in a single, integrated set of search results.
The following figure presents a graphical overview of universal search.
Your goal is to deliver universal search to your users. The two major aspects of deploying universal search with a Google Search Appliance are:
This section provides an overview of each of these aspects.
The Google Search Appliance can crawl and index content from many sources, including:
For more information about how the Google Search Appliance crawls and indexes different types of content sources, refer to Crawling and Indexing.
While your ultimate goal is to deliver universal search to your users, Google recommends that you achieve your goal by taking a phased approach. Start by crawling (discovering) and indexing the most important content sources and serving results from these content sources first.
When users search for information, the Google Search Appliance returns a single set of search results that are integrated from different types of sources. Results are ranked based on relevancy. The following figure shows a set of search results that are integrated from sources including an intranet, two content management systems, and a file share.
You can effectively deploy the Google Search Appliance for universal search by just using built-in features. However, the Google Search Appliance provides many capabilities and features that--when used--enable you to enhance universal search and the search experience for your users.
For more information about enhancing the search experience, refer to Using Features to Enhance the Search Experience.
Deploying a Google Search Appliance for universal search involves several activities, such as identifying the enterprise content that you want your users to be able to search, installing a search appliance, crawling and indexing content, and making search available to your users. The following table lists the major deployment activities described in this document. To read about a specific activity, refer to the section listed in the table.
| Activity | Described in Section |
|---|---|
| Planning a universal search solution for your enterprise | Planning |
| Installing a Google Search Appliance and configuring it to communicate with other computers on your network | Installing and Configuring a Search Appliance |
| Crawling your enterprise content and creating a search index | Crawling and Indexing |
| Customizing the way the search appliance presents search and results to users | Using Features to Enhance the Search Experience |
| Extending the capabilities of the search appliance by using protocols, interfaces, and connectors | Extending Universal Search |
| Running various tests to validate your universal search solution | Testing Your Search Appliance Implementation |
| Launching your universal search solution | Going Live |
For a comprehensive list of deployment activities, see the Universal Search Deployment Activity Checklist.
Let Google know what you think about this document by sending feedback to gsadoc-gtm-feedback@google.com.
|
