[Sigia-l] interposing taxonomy in search

[Austin Govella]

On 9/22/05, Eric Scheid <eric.scheid at ironclad.net.au> wrote:
>  Go to <http://filmaust.com.au/library/search.asp>, select the third
> heading ("Search APT subject headings"), enter "kangaroo" as the search
> term, and click "Search"...
>
> Not for the faint hearted!

That's cool. I'm working on something similar.

To support better search we've created a database that supports a
dynamic architecture. Essentially all of our "names" like page titles,
urls, global nav, etc. are stored separately from all of our "items"
like content, phone numbers, files, etc.

Because of the architecture, any item can have more than one name.
I.e. if a name is a way that people map pathways to content, then one
can find content using the page title, the url, the global nav
taxonomy, or a search query.

For searches, queries would be run against the names and the content.
Querying our various lists of names, we can search all the ways people
map pathways to content. This means we can query page names, text
content, img captions, or various taxonomies.

And... the really cool part: search queries are just more "names"
which means best bets and recommended content is just another taxonomy
the database will handle.

(We haven't tested the search yet. We're still testing the database
and application framework.)

--
Austin Govella
Thinking & Making: IA, UX, and IxD
http://thinkingandmaking.com
austin.govella at gmail.com