Why do you need a book about search? Isn't search easy? A searcher enters some text into a box, clicks a button, and hey presto! – all the pertinent information appears in a nice handy list. Google made it simple; why can't your company do the same?

It turns out that effective search is complicated – and hard. Ask any enterprise knowledge manager, website owner, e-commerce director, or, really, any fellow employee, ‘Are you satisfied with your search engine?’ The responses will catalogue a litany of woes: ‘It gives the wrong answers’; ‘We don't understand how it works’; ‘It doesn't find all of our information’; ‘It's slow’; ‘The results are cluttered and irrelevant.’

This is often followed by the almost inevitable kicker: ‘We're investigating new search technology to fix it.’

Yet technology is rarely the problem. Although people have been searching electronic information for more than four decades, search as a discipline remains quite young. You have significant choices about what technologies to apply and how to deploy them. Security, usability, scalability, and information architecture all present complicated, but important, challenges. Enterprises that succeed at search address these challenges as an ongoing process rather than a discrete technology project.

That's why you need this book.

I can think of no one better than Martin White to create a businessperson's guide to good search practices. As a search expert of global repute (and outlook!), Martin has taken the time and care to condense a complicated topic into an easy read. There are a variety of different technical approaches to search in the marketplace, but this book is essential to any search manager.