Do That Searchy Thing
Just for you, we have a sneak preview of a new search we’re implementing on Cisco.com.
We think you’ll like it, and here’s why.
Normally, if you search for a topic on Cisco.com or most other sites—whether it’s a really technical topic or something more general—you’re innundated with results from all over the site.
For instance, say you’re in a small business just getting into networking and you’re curious about a topic like “difference between a router and a switch”...
On Cisco.com, you’ll get a rich assortment of 4,000 results, and frankly the ones at the top may not be what you want…
Why such a jumble of results? Because, really, how’s the search engine to know what you’re trying to find? Or that in fact you’re in a small business as opposed to, say, running a big enterprise IT group?
But, if you try the same search in our new search beta, you’ll notice you get a lot more control…
Look on the left side of the picture: You can actually narrow down, filter, or expand searches based on criteria like business size (here’s a close-up)...
So that you get a nice subsetted list of the documents that are really appropriate to what you’re looking for (just three relevant entries!)...
And can zoom in on just the right document…
There are a lot of nifty features, like auto-suggest of search terms, which I’ll write more about soon.
And, since this is Beta and we’re still doing a lot of tuning, be sure to leave feedback via the floating feedback link on the page.
Enjoy!
P.S. You’ll notice there’s a link to the new Search Beta in our regular search results, too. Be sure to compare and let us know which you like better and why.
Posted by Martin Hardee at 10:50AM PST
Dave Derrick Jan 7, 2008
I can’t tell you how happy I was to hear that someone was working on a new search tool. It seems like quite an improvement based on a couple simple tests I ran using the Beta version. Thanks!
Is it possible to expand the searches so they include PDF docs? At least cisco.com index entries for PDF copies?