[Sigia-l] (Event) Conducting a Search Audit - August 5th Taxonomy Community of Practice Call

[Rebecca Allen]

Invitation
Please join us for our monthly Taxonomy Community of Practice Call. This month's session discusses Conducting a Search Audit.

Date:  Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Time:  1:00 - 2:00 Eastern Time
Cost:  $50

To register, visit: http://www.earley.com/webinars/conducting-enterprise-search-audits

An enterprise search audit will determine where you need to specifically improve search processes. Based on actual user behavior and system results, a search audit will provide hard data for a baseline evaluation of search effectiveness. We'll discuss types of search audits, approaches for gathering data and ways a search audit can pinpoint the needs for improvement in system tuning, metadata and content management processes.

Jeannine Bartlett will present Strategies for Search Auditing.

What's in a search audit, and why should you consider conducting one? We'll look at enterprise search security audits, a framework for measuring the enterprise search "experience", and an approach to website search SWOT analysis. We'll wrap up with a range of ideas for interpreting and leveraging search audit results.

Avi Rappoport will present Auditing Search: The Invisible Part.

The searchable index itself doesn't get much attention, but there are very important things there (or not in there) that define the quality of the search. Search log top query and click-through metrics can indicate missing sources and other problems. The index may need to update more frequently, it may have security and access control problems, it may be tuned for smaller disk space requirements, and the document store may be insufficient. Essentially a Search Audit should also analyze what's in the index, what's not, and why.

Session Presenters
Jeannine Bartlett of Earley & Associates has 15+ years of executive experience leading research and development, marketing and corporate strategy at both startup and public companies. Jeannine has held senior roles in the development and deployment of technologies as diverse as: search, discovery and collaboration systems; Internet media, publishing and portals; data and web application security; data warehousing, ETL and replication; and large-scale performance and test systems. She is the author of a patent pending for cooperative processing and escalation in data and application layer security, holds a Top Secret security clearance, and was a Trustee Merit Scholar at Austin College.

Avi Rappoport of Search Tools Consulting is a leading authority on Enterprise Search Engines for web sites, intranets and topical portals. She combines research in information retrieval with years in the software industry to bring a practical and straightforward approach to web search and navigation issues. She evaluates search engines for features, functionality and usability, with an emphasis on find the best way to meet end-user needs.

Earley.com relaunch!
Visit the new site at http://www.earley.com

Check out the new SharePoint Information Architecture Community of Practice, founded in response to the recent SharePoint Search & IA webinar series:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SharePointIACoP/

Thank you,

Rebecca Allen
Taxonomy Consultant
_____________________________
EARLEY & ASSOCIATES
Cell: 425-299-5400
Email: rebecca at earley.com
Web: www.earley.com