Guardian revamps search engine with Endeca

The publisher launched the new search engine on the Guardian Unlimited front page in late October 2005, and plans to roll the new search out across the whole site by the end of the year.

The Guardian is hoping to stave off competition from search engines, such as Google, MSN, Yahoo! And Ask, which are expanding their own news search features, negating the need to visit individual news sites.

Endeca said the new search engine includes a number of ways of refining search enquiries, with ‘Guided Navigation’ and ‘Content Spotlighting’ features.

For example, a search for "Sudoku" returns a list of 112 results from across the site - including both articles and puzzles, is flanked by navigation refinement options or "filters".

Users can filter results by section, publication year, and publication (such as The Guardian, Guardian Unlimited, The Observer) and is topped with a spotlighted editor's recommendation for a downloadable PDF of "The Daily Sudoku".

Lloyd Shepherd, deputy director, digital publishing at Guardian Newspapers, said: “"We wanted to do something that the big web search engines wouldn't be able to do - use the information in our content management system to make a browsable search experience. After all, what's the point of having our own search if it doesn't do a better job of searching our content than the big search engines already do?"

In related news, Endeca has today launched a new service, called Information Access Solutions for Media and Publishing, which is designed to help online publishers, content providers and other information suppliers deploy retrieval capabilities for websites, customer and employee-facing content services and online directory applications.