Michelle sent me an interesting article: Enterprise Search Just not there Yet. She and I both agreed... it is a terrible analysis.

To sum up, a lot of people are complaining that their enterprise search appliances aren't working right. Why doesn't it work like Google? they all say... I can always find relevant information on Google! Well, I got news for you:

People get paid LOTS of money to make sure Google can find their content.

People have meetings about getting high rankings... they hone their content. They obsess about keywords, and making sure the content is written in a readable format. They obsess about URLs, and make sure other pages link to this content. They register with a bunch of indexes, catalogs, and online yellow pages to boost relevance. They set up whole web sites for specific topics, neatly organized with clear, browsable topics. They hire very expensive specialists in SEO, and information architecture. In others words, internet content creators actually care if people find their content!

Google has it easy...

In contrast, how many enterprise employees obsess about findability, browseability, proper language, or keywords? How much of their content is even intended for an outside audience? How many of them even bother to enhance their content with useful metadata like title or comment? How many of them actively promote their content, and ask people to link to it?

Pretty nearly zero...

Without this effort, not even Google's laudable algorithm can find useful content in the enterprise... as is evidence by the general disappointment of the Google search appliance. No auto categorization engine can save you. No search engine will rescue you. No matter what people would like to believe, no software can ever replace a human being who actually gives a damn.

So... how do we fix the enterprise findability problem? It won't happen until people start caring both about them being able to find others' content, and others being able to find their content. I suggest you take advantage of the natural competitive nature inside humans... cash incentives might backfire, but nothing motivates people more than "your hit count is below average."

Start publicly ranking people on how findable their content is, and I guarantee that things will improve.