Google Search Appliance (discontinued)

Score9.4 out of 10

18 Reviews and Ratings

What is Google Search Appliance (discontinued)?

The Google Search Appliance provided document indexing. The product was discontinued in favor of Google's cloud-based options.

Categories & Use Cases

Enterprise Search

Verified User

Employee in Engineering (51-200 employees employees)

Pros

Homes in on key searches.
Immediate response.
Simple UI, very user-friendly.

Cons

No feedback.

Return on Investment

Positive impact: saves time.
Positive impact: less frustration because ease of use.

Alternatives Considered

Azure Bing Search

Verified User

Manager in Marketing (10,001+ employees employees)

Pros

The GSA is able to organize collections of content in many different permutations, based on your needs.
The logs of searches and served results can offer insights into what visitors/customers are seeking, and whether they're finding what they need.
Default front-ends are relatively easy to set up - if they meet your needs.

Cons

It's my understanding that Google is ending support for the appliance soon. This is obviously an important consideration.
The administrator interface is far from easy to use.
There is a significant learning curve for new users.

Return on Investment

The GSA was not cheap. At all.
There has also been a cost associated with our need to switch to another site search solution in the near future, due to Google ending support for the sppliance.
That said, we have so much support content that we owed it to our customers to offer a comprehensive search tool to help them find the most relevant content - and of course Google are the masters of this. However, it's worth noting that the alogorithms used on the GSA are far older than those used on google.com.

Other Software Used

BrightEdge, Google Analytics Premium, Adobe Social