The word just got out:
That’s why today there’s a new version of the Google Search Appliance that can handle even more documents, and offers some cool new features to boot. The GB-8008 now searches up to 30 million documents (if you need more, just let us know).
This is fairly interesting because some months ago, I was looking for a Google Mini and/or Google Search Appliance solution for the insite search of Bullguard, which would require at LEAST a 500.000 pages capacity, which had to be easily upgraded.
You would wonder: Why the hell would you want to pay 2000 bucks on a Google Mini, when you can have so many open-source scripts ?
My answer ? RELEVANCE. Imagine a visitor coming to search something in your 500.000 pages website, doing 1, 2, 3, 4 searches and still not finding anything relevant. That visitor WILL leave your website and move on to the next one.
The story ? Credibility reduces, functionality reduces.
I requested demos/trials of almost all the search engines listed at Searchtools.com (btw, GREAT resource, please bookmark it), and I have to say that relevance and price (some search companies asked me 40.000 USD for a copy of their search script) wise, the Google appliance is the most indicated solution for any medium to big company, with a comprehensive website content.
The offer sent to me by a Google salesperson didn’t truly convinced me, the main reason beeing the limited number of pages that the appliance could index.
More details on Google’s Enterprise blog.
