There are many ways to get to content on the intranet: navigation, cross links, tags, via employee profiles and... search.

Most of us use Google to search on the internet and we are quite happy with the returned results. But often we are not so happy with the search in the intranet.

Intranet search is still a feature that leaves a lot to be desired in many organisations.

This article contains some lessons I learned implementing search in an intranet with the Google Search Appliance¹ and how to prepare the intranet content for it. There are also many tips you can use without the GSA. We took search serious and it turned into a mini project next to delivering the intranet.

Do we need search?

Gerry McGovern² says "I only use search when I can't navigate". I agree that the site navigation is the primary way to get to desired content. However search can be very useful to search in archives, in documents or other content that is not so obvious to place in the navigation. And some people just simply prefer search!

With the rise of social elements in the intranet, the intranet can become a mash up of different integrated systems. There is still the traditional content management system, but also applications for the wiki, the blogs or microblogging. A good intranet has one search feature that returns relevant results of all integrated platforms.

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