Traditional search returns a rush of information. As the amount of data out there explodes, search results simply become overwhelming.

The increased availability of information and the necessity of understanding what is available have made traditional keyword search woefully inadequate. Traditional search engines come up short because:

• all types of data have to be searched
• people want to search not just using keywords, but also relevant data such as dates, inventory, and price
• users often need to search multiple sources, including Web sites and databases that can only be accessed using a user id and password
• an initial query typically does not fully define what the person is really looking for
• when a large number of results are returned, there is no way to understand what concepts or themes exist in the data
• if nothing perfectly fits what the person specifies, there is no way to determine what comes closest

“Traditional search technology has focused on giving a few expert users the tools to structure precise and complex questions with specialized query languages. But today’s site visitors enter simple words and phrases, don’t always spell correctly, and may even think ‘Boolean’ is a type of soup.”
- Paul R. Hagen, “Must Search Stink?” Forrester Report, June 2000

Our response? iXfind.