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I recently began a conversation with a webmaster who we are working with to provide consulting to a client. I forwarded him an email from Gerry McGovern, who I consider one of the leading content gurus of our time.

Here’s a snippet from Gerry’s newsletter about Intranet Search:

Intranet search performs miserably because most organizations do not properly manage their content.

Most intranet search delivers lamentably poor results. Time and time again, I hear staff plead: “Why can’t we just get Google?” But buying Google-or any other search engine for that matter-will not solve the problem.

Gerry’s argument is that throwing a search engine, no matter how robust, at poorly managed content will not deliver the results you need. You are better off focusing your energy on creating and managing high-quality content. I think Gerry is right on the money.

Our conversation follows.

Partner:

When the time for (client) comes to have an intranet (which I’ve already suggested), I will make sure this is top of mind.

I said:

Well, it’s a bigger issue, not intranet-specific. Is your website a data warehouse? Are relevant documents linked to each other? Are you putting out and putting up content that no one has any use for? It’s about being thoughtful about your content, whatever it is.

Partner:

True, so true. The web site could be a data warehouse, but what do you mean by that term?

I said:

Well, think about the metaphor of a warehouse - a huge, dusty cavern of boxed-up stuff sitting on shelves. It takes special machinery to get something down. It takes forever to find what you want - unless you happen to know how the system is organized. You can’t just walk in there and get the one thing you need. All these sad little bits of data are sitting forlornly in boxes waiting for someone to find them. No one ever does, and eventually they get shipped off to an archive, from which it is even less possible to retrieve them.

Online content doesn’t have to sit in boxes in a warehouse. It can be dynamic. It can be relevant. It can be useful and easy to find. Data that are related can be linked. The answer lies not in content creation, but in content editing.

Every organization generates content, some more than others. It’s about what you do with that content and how you holistically approach the online storage of that content. It’s editing that 20-page pdf (”pdf’s are where knowledge goes to die”) into 5 pages of linked, concise, relevant, useful html.

Another choice snippet from Gerry:
[brackets mine]

Too many intranets [and websites] are being filled with garbage-poor quality, badly written, badly structured, second-hand content. This content is “put up” by an army of low-skilled put-it-uppers. It doesn’t matter what sort of fancy search technology you have-it’s garbage in, garbage out.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 4th, 2006 at 1:41 pm and is filed under Content. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.