The cost of working with inadequate information and inefficient search capabilities is one of the most pressing threats to any competitive business. Independent research analysts, Butler Group, recently reported that information-based workers spend up to 20 hours a week searching for information[1]. And enterprise search has been highlighted by Gartner as the highest impact trend through to 2012, with the global market expected to top $1.2billion by 2010[2].

And yet Google appears to be going down a search self-service route if the latest on its corporate blog is anything to go by.

According to Google’s Search Quality Engineers Amay Champaneria and Beverly Yang: “You’ve probably had the experience where you’ve clicked a result and it wasn’t quite what you were looking for. Perhaps the result just wasn’t quite right, but sometimes you may dislike the site in general, whether it’s offensive, pornographic or of generally low quality. For times like these, you’ll start seeing a new option to block particular domains from your future search results.”

Simon Bain, CTO of Simplexo, states: “It is one of those commonly observed ironies of the modern world that despite living in the information age”, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to obtain accurate information when it is needed. A Butler report recently cited that the average information-based worker spends up to 20 hours each week searching for information. As the technology of delivering information becomes more sophisticated, the possibility of managing all that information remains just as remote. Indeed this announcement by Google appears to throw the problem back at the consumer, as opposed to getting the search parameters right in the first place.

According to the blog Google goes on to state: “We’re adding this feature because we believe giving you control over the results you find will provide an even more personalized and enjoyable experience on Google. In addition, while we’re not currently using the domains people block as a signal in ranking, we’ll look at the data and see whether it would be useful as we continue to evaluate and improve our search results in the future.”

Simon Bain continued: “Traditionally, mainstream search technology has tended to focus on searching for information on the Web. The business model associated with this draws heavily from advertising revenue and ‘sponsored’ keywords that have an influence on the results returned. This technology does not translate well to the corporate environment, where the requirement is for commercially supported software that returns unbiased results and a complete view of all relevant information sources. Traditional search engines are therefore unlikely to fulfil the requirements of the average business.

Neither is it productive, when searching a particular keyword, to be swamped with so much irrelevant information that the search is effectively useless. It is imperative for businesses to choose a system which can both check for duplications and present a definitive version, and also intelligently select from websites to enable specified pathways to be included as information sources,” he added.

Simplexo has recently launched ‘Search Your Desktop’ which uniquely allows users to access information in a secure, fast and easy to use way.

With ‘Search Your Desktop’ you can uniquely access files remotely, without the need to load your entire desktop, making it faster to find information than ever before and easier to use than remote desktop clients.

Work or play, ‘Search Your Desktop’ allows you to search for - and find -important work related files on your desktop computer from a mobile smartphone or web browser. It also allows you to access media files and create play lists for remote playing and listening to music - even when you are away from your PC!

[1] http://www.butlergroup.com/about.asp
[2] http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1278413