Search Tools Get Smarter

Endeca Technologies Inc., iPhrase Technologies Inc. and Ask Jeeves Inc.s Jeeves Solutions division are releasing new versions of their software, with a common thread of developing more intelligent search results gleaned from more content and data sources (see screen).

Endeca this week will announce Version 3.5 of its namesake Navigation Engine platform, while iPhrase is adding reporting functionality to its OneStep offering. Jeeves Solutions last week announced Version 3.0 of its JeevesOne product.

Endeca Navigation Engine 3.5 includes the Cambridge, Mass., companys ProFind and InFront applications. InFront is used as a search tool at business-to-business and business-to-consumer Web sites. ProFind is a broader enterprise search product, used for both customer-facing and internal search and knowledge management applications.

The platform sports Linux and Windows Server 2003 support as well as a .Net API, Western European Language support and native taxonomy integration. It also features a revamped user behavior reporting module with more than 50 metrics delivered via customizable HTML reports, Endeca officials said.

InFront adds support for geospatial search and navigation, allowing users to search on geographic areas related to the subject of their search, and the creation of custom B2B product catalogs based on approved vendors or specific SKUs.

ProFind adds the ability to search on content throughout the enterprise, including integration with existing security and authentication systems. It also supports integration with categorization and auto-tagging products from third-party developers.

Catherine Beckman, an e-business manager at specialty chemicals manufacturer Cabot Corp., in Boston, said shes particularly interested in the new geospatial search and B2B catalog capabilities in InFront.

"Were a fairly complex organization," explained Beckman, who said Cabot is using InFront and ProFind. "We have a lot of detailed technical information our customers have to sort through at our site. The Endeca navigation system gives us the ability to tag the information so that our site visitors can navigate through it based on parameters they set."

Separately, iPhrase, also of Cambridge, is adding several analytic reports to track users interaction with the OneStep application.

These reports include User Intelligence Reports that show what users were looking for, how they searched and what content was presented to them. The Content Utilization Reports module summarizes how frequently content covered within the repository is being used based on direct requests to the system. Gap Reports measures system accuracy and shows what requests are not being fulfilled. The Summary Reports module provides summaries of results generated by other reports and segments customer responses by topic.

For its part, Jeeves Solutions last week announced JeevesOne 3.0, which company officials, in Emeryville, Calif., said can deliver results from multiple back-end systems, including enterprise applications.

JeevesOne 3.0 also features more flexible output options to eliminate intermediate steps in finding information as well as a new administrative console to give administrators more control over the system, officials said.