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Search is huge these days, and you know that if you've been watching the technology press follow every move that Google makes. But while Web search is mostly about getting companies and products in front of customers, and the paid advertising element becomes increasingly important, the giants in Web search have left the door open when it comes to internal search.

ISYS is one of the companies looking to step in where Google and Microsoft have yet to step up. Last month, ISYS released ISYS:web 7, the latest version of its search solution for Web sites, intranets, and portals.

ISYS is far from new to the game. The company was founded in 1988 in Australia, and got its start making desktop search tools for DOS. It still makes a desktop search offering, the latest version of which is called, appropriately enough, ISYS:desktop 7. It introduced a Web search product in the 90s, employs 25 people, and has received no outside funding.

Even small and medium-sized companies are drowning amid all the digital content they've created over the last few years. This plays right into the hands of a vendor like ISYS because these companies can't afford costly search applications.

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"The mid-market is our bread and butter," said Dave Haucke, VP of global marketing for ISYS. Typically, ISYS gets into large companies at the department level, when it's picked up by the R&D or engineering department. Its desktop search product also serves as a good entry point. Smaller organizations tend to use ISYS:web across the enterprise.

With intranets constantly in danger of becoming dumping grounds for digital content, ISYS has seen more interest in its ISYS:web product of late. "In last two years, we've seen a noticeable increase in number of web sales and I'd say three-quarters of them are for intranets," Haucke told Intranet Journal.

With a price point that comes in right between the Google Mini and the Google Search Appliance, ISYS:web won't break the bank at mid-sized companies. ISYS doesn't charge by the document, and it also offers perpetual licenses.

Haucke said the enterprise search appliances from Google are quick, but they aren't nearly as flexible as ISYS:web 7, which can be run out-of-the-box or customized using a development toolkit. Deployment is quick, with indexing taking most of the time, according to Haucke.

"Generally, in an intranet environment, we give users the ability to create a taxonomy," Haucke said. There are loads of options for helping users find the right information. ISYS:web 7 offers a Menu-Assisted Search, which lets users add Boolean to their searches with a point-and-click interface. That's one of five search options ranging from simple natural language to the more complex command-based search that uses ISYS Query Syntax.

Menu-Assisted Search in ISYS:web 7 lets users build their own Boolean queries using a point-and-click interface.

ISYS:web also offers a Word Wheel, which opens searches up to words that sound like or stem (start with the same letters as) a search query. It's often used to search for derivatives of certain words. "The idea being you can get into some situations where you can get into some pretty funky things with product names and the like," Haucke said.

Among the features for search results is On-the-Fly Categorization, which allows users to drill down into a particular category and refine the results for a specific topic. Administrators can use the feature to create new categories, such as "Important Information" links that use information from the most popular searches.

Speaking of the most popular searches, new in ISYS:web 7 is a strong stats package so administrators can see how the search engine is being used. In previous versions, ISYS provided only raw logs that customers could use to run SQL queries to create reports.

The new stats package includes reports that will tell administrators what the next term searched was; ascending searches that show a rise in popularity; and the all important searches without results, so admins can tweak the system so users get answers.

ISYS:web 7 defaults to the Windows security settings at PC log-in to keep users from seeing documents in their search results they shouldn't see. Administrators have the option of showing such material in the search results but not allowing access.

There are also options for Saved Searches, an Intelligent Agent to push new information to users who want it, and an outline feature that lets you see search terms in the context of a document such as a PDF file before you open a PDF reader.

"The whole idea of search is to save you time," Haucke said. "From our point of view, the more help we can give you before the query, the more time you'll save."

Advanced search in ISYS:web 7 lets users include meta data and choose repository and document type.

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