Google boosts enterprise search appliance

Google is expanding its presence behind the firewall with an updated version of its Google Search Appliance featuring expanded capacity and improved security.

The new 2U form factor Google Search Appliance GB-1001 supports five times the document capacity of the previous version, expanding from 300,000 documents to 1.5 million, according to Dave Girouard, general manager of enterprise at Google.

Software enhancements include a continuous crawl feature that scans and indexes content continually rather than the previous batch crawling function.

"Now it is always crawling documents and verifying if a document has changed. The result is that content is much fresher. It is a matter of minutes between a change and the update of the system," Girouard said.

The updated appliance also bolsters security with added support for HTML-forms-based SSO (single sign-on). This feature allows the appliance to validate corporate user rights so that users will see only the search results they have access to, according to Girouard.

Another software enhancement, dubbed "unlimited collections," allows IT managers to administer multiple appliances separately and tailor indexes for different departments.

The appliance also includes improved filters and more detailed usage reporting and monitoring to provide information about the number of queries and most popular search terms, according to Google officials.

In other enterprise-search news, Fast Search and Transfer later this month plans to launch search software designed for marketing departments, while Recommind will unveil MindServer 3.0, which it is aiming at integrators.