Google Search Appliance Creating the Search Experience - Manual (Page 15)

Google Search Appliance: Creating the Search Experience Introduction 15
Collections are independent of front ends. However, you can use a custom front end with a specific
collection to help improve searches and enhance results. Continuing the previous example, in addition
to an HR collection, suppose you have also configured an HR front end and associated it with the HR
collection. When end users search using the HR front end, the search is restricted to the HR collection.
Another example is to configure a front end for customers and associate it with a customer collection.
The customer collection contains only public, non-secure information, such as descriptions of products
and services. When customers search using this front end, the search is restricted to information in the
customer collection.
There are two ways to associate a collection with a front end:
• Add an element to the search page, such as a select list or radio button that enables end users to
select collections for their searches
• Use query parameters to bind a collection to a front end, then mask the query parameters using a
proxy server
For details about adding an element to a search page to enable searching by collection, refer to
Changing the User Interface.
To create a collection, use the Crawl and Index > Collections page in the Admin Console. For
information about using this page to create a collection, see Help Center > Crawl and Index >
Collections.
Note: When defining collections that include content from a content connector, the URL patterns refer
to the internal URL representation (the “googleconnector:” patterns), rather than the displayed URLs.
For more information about the content connectors, refer to the Documentation for the Google
Enterprise Connectors.
Maximum Number of Front Ends and Collections
Do not create more than the maximum number of front ends or collections for a search appliance:
• For front ends, the maximum number is 200
• For collections, the maximum number is 200
Google recommends that you keep the number of front ends and collections as low as possible. If you
create more than 200 front ends or 200 collections, importing or exporting a configuration might be
slow. If Enterprise Support determines that this performance issue caused by too many front ends or
collections, they might require you to reduce their numbers.
Improving Searches
One way to improve an end user's search experience is to provide feedback that helps her find
information that she might otherwise miss. One form of feedback that Google provides by default is
spelling suggestions. This is a built-in feature of the Google Search Appliance that works the same as it
does on Google.com.
When an end user types a search term that seems to be a misspelling, the search appliance responds
with a spelling suggestion. For example, if an end user types “aduio,” the search appliance responds
with the following spelling suggestion:
Did you mean: audio
This feedback gives the user an opportunity to: