PicoSearch Enhances Managed Search Platform

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.”