PicoSearch Enhances Managed Search Platform
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The company's platform now offers AutoComplete, designed to speed Website visitor searches.
Search services specialist PicoSearch, a SAS company, announced a variety of
enhancements to its hosted search application, designed to help small to
medium-size businesses ensure their site visitors find the content they need.
The company, which offers management of searchable pages and additional search
analytics tools to monitor customer traffic, aims to help businesses enhance
their company's Website experience and improve the relevance of information.
PicoSearch service plans are available online. Midmarket companies can
incorporate search capabilities into their Website by signing up for the hosted
search engine service. PicoSearch's platform is designed to handle the back-end
work required to run and maintain a site search system. Its technology is
capable of processing searches of unlimited page volumes, and its server
facility is designed to keep customers' hosted engines up and running 24/7.
"Websites that offer visitors a navigation tool to quickly narrow down
information can drastically improve results," said Fiona McNeill, global
product marketing manager at SAS. "PicoSearch empowers customers with
their own deeply customizable search engine. The new Query Rules feature is the
most powerful feature yet to control a site's user queries. It offers the
possibility to rewrite your user queries to your specifications-giving users
flexibility that no other vendor provides."
Enhancements to PicoSearch include AutoComplete with customizability that allows
companies to automatically offer suggested searches to visitors. Suggestions
come bootstrapped from automatic data mining of a Website's most important
phrases, or from the Webmaster's own preferred phrase lists, with control to
review and manage suggestions.
Other enhancements include query rules, which provide generalized functions to
define rules to equate alternate spellings, rewrite search operations and
standardize punctuations within searches; and statistical reporting, which now keeps
better track of search trends-showing what site visitors are finding and not
finding on your site-with the ability to select date ranges for hits at a point
in time, hit highlighting and other new features.
In addition, tabled results display allows a table presentation of products and
services with information displayed in columns, including pictures. The Display
Result Numbering feature lets users decide whether to display numbering next to
each result: Paid accounts may also customize the CSS
Style of the number display.
"PicoSearch brought a high level of professionalism to our site,"
said Lesley Hayes, IT support manager for furniture manufacturer Barlow Tyrie.
"Without PicoSearch, visitors could lose patience, wading through hundreds
of search results from global search engines. PicoSearch makes searches more
productive with AutoComplete, the drop-down box that offers to complete a user
query-as they type in their search. These suggested completions save time and
help steer the user toward the most important matches from the Website."
