Chad Johnson

I tried on Google Glass a few times.  I wasn’t impressed.  Does that mean it’s an awful product?  No.  Does that mean it is not useful?  No.  So what happened? This week the Wall St. Journal reported that Google is not giving up on Google Glass.  Google acknowledges that it was a first generation product with some rough […]

We’re on a roll!  Cody Coggins and Narbeh Yousefian have joined the elite team of Google Search Appliance (GSA) Qualified Deployment Specialists. They join existing GSA specialists Anu Pidaparti, Allen Han, Alok Gupta, Shruti Sundaresh, Yogesh Dhavale, and myself. The 4-part certification process is rigorous and designed to validate the experience of individuals among search […]

Sorry… this post is not going to teach you how to build a connector.  Maybe next time. Instead, I am going back a little earlier in the process.  I want to describe the process for qualifying our ability to build a new connector in the first place.  How do we estimate the level of effort?  How do we […]

I would like to congratulate Anu Pidaparti, Lead Technical Consultant, for achieving her Google Search Appliance (GSA) Qualified Deployment Specialist certification.  Anu is the 6th GSA Qualified Deployment Specialist on our Google team. The 4-part certification process is rigorous and designed to validate the experience of individuals among search partners. The qualification process includes certification […]

Yesterday a client asked me what Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) they should be tracking on their public site search. At first I was afraid I would not be able to answer this question – I don’t know their business or website nearly as well as they do. I know the wide variety of statistics that are […]

If you have read Google’s product literature, you know that the Google Search Appliance is a very secure device.  The bright yellow appliance runs a hardened version of CentOS, and the inner-workings are safely hidden behind root login. So, assuming we are dealing with an appliance with Fort Knox-level protection, what risks remain?  Below are several potential […]

“Are my GSA search results good?”  Well, if you don’t know, then I don’t know.  This is obviously a subjective question, and you likely know your own content much better than I do.  While I may not be able to answer the question for you, I would like to offer some tips to help objectively measure […]

Google often quotes that the average query submitted to their website is 1.7 words long.  That means that most queries contain only two words, and a fair number contain only one word.  Google can be magical at times, but using one or two words to search through trillions of web pages seems at best hit or miss.  In […]

UPDATE 2014-07-02: Adaptors are not really evil.  We are currently developing both Connectors and Adaptors.  The point of these articles is to help you draw your own conclusions.  : ) Previously I discussed the Plexi Adaptor framework for the Google Search Appliance. Adaptors can provide a simple and elegant way to index a content repository.  An Adaptor sits in front of a […]

I have always been impressed with Google’s attention to detail.  The custom yellow shell around the Google Search Appliance is completely useless, but I suspect it has enhanced the value of their trademark.  GMail’s reminder when you mention an attachment in your message but forget to actually attach a document is downright useful. Two recent examples caught my attention, and […]

The Google Search Appliance has historically required Connectors to facilitate the indexing of non-HTTP content repositories.  A Connector is a program that sits between the GSA and a repository, and pushes the GSA everything it needed to know to index the repository (including the content, metadata, and security information).  A Connector can use any technique to interrogate the repository […]

Out of the Box The Google Search Appliance ships with a full-function — but no thrills — XSL template (XSLT) that we refer to as the ‘out of the box’ user interface.  It looks a little bit like google.com did a few years ago – lots of blue and white, and very few graphics.  But […]