Benefits of taxonomies over search have frequently been a matter of debate. However, this does not mean that taxonomies and search remain mutually exclusive methods. Rather, they are complementary and can improve search results and user experience in enterprises. Heather Hedden, senior vocabulary editor at Gale/Cengage, details various taxonomies and search combinations enterprises can leverage to provide their users with a unified experience and optimum results.
Enterprises can offer searching on the taxonomy as a standard search feature. Among the options, including a choice between full text/keyword search and taxonomy/subject search, a search box with taxonomy terms as the default search option would be the simplest. In this option, if the taxonomy term (or its synonyms) does not match the user-entered search string, the search will automatically revert to full-text search. Hence, it will be seamless user experience, as the user does not have to decide whether to search the taxonomy or not.
Another combination of taxonomy and search that can be used by enterprises is faceted search. The implementation of faceted search in enterprises is increasingly common as the list of terms within each facet is usually short enough to be browsed. Furthermore, the content items are tagged with the taxonomy terms from each of the multiple facets. Users can select terms from each of any number of facets to narrow the results. In addition, faceted search offers users the option of selecting terms from facets before or after executing a keyword search. To sum up, faceted search cedes control to the user to limit or broaden the search results.
A different implementation of the taxonomy and search combination is post-search refinements. It offers users experience similar to the one offered by faceted search. In this form of taxonomy and search combination, a post-will display only the values indexed on the result set, not the entire taxonomy. By selecting one of the indexed terms, the user can get a subset of the retrieved results, which in turn will offer a more focused result.
Enterprises are beginning to embrace knowledge graphs. In combination with enterprise search besides providing a traditional display of search results, knowledge graphs display a quick fact box. The fact box serves up information about the searched topic, without the user having to follow links. However, for knowledge graphs to work inside the enterprise, content needs to be tagged with metadata, which comes from taxonomy, more consistently.
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