All the pundits agree on the important role of a taxonomy for a search and retrieval implementation and of user testing. But what is a taxonomy, how do you get one, and how does it really make a difference? How do you organize user tests and apply the results in a search and retrieval implementation? This tutorial covers the basics of metadata and taxonomies, how metadata drives search functions, what taxonomies are, and how they show up in site search.

This tutorial takes a deeper look at the specific role of metadata and taxonomies in enabling site search to provide answers to hard questions about enterprise content architecture strategies. What does every content manager need to know about taxonomies, metadata, and required fields? How can a taxonomy and metadata model drive successful search, workflow, content re-use, and the automation of content production processes? What are the critical elements of a business case for a content architecture? What are the essential do’s and don’ts of designing a metadata and taxonomy model? The tutorial concludes by looking at how to test a taxonomy’s effectiveness with users.

Learn the fundamentals about how enterprise search engines differ from public Web search engines and how they are the same. Acquire a solid grounding on how search engines work, from indexing to the actual search to the results display, using real-world examples, so that you can make the most of the intensive, in-depth sessions at Enterprise Search Summit. This workshop will cover robot spiders, general index structures, simple query parsing, retrieval, relevance ranking, and designing usable search interfaces. It will explore the three core aspects of enterprise search: search functionality, content searchability, and interface. There will be some time to discuss attendees’ experiences with enterprise search and to suggest directions for improvement.