Q: How does a remote search system work?
A:  CrownPeak Search starts off by reading or "spidering" all of a site’s content.   Unlike most search systems that simply create an index of the site’s content, CrownPeak Search works to understand that content using powerful language and semantic modeling techniques.  By understanding each piece of content, CrownPeak Search can also understand relationships between content.  It enables us to answer questions like, "what content is similar to this content" or "are there groups or clusters of content that are conceptually related", or "what other content is linked to this content?".  When a search request is made, the results are actually returned from the CrownPeak servers.  The results page is completely customized to be a part of the original site, so to the searcher, it is a completely “in-site” experience.  CrownPeak is totally platform independent, and can work with any target web site.  Better yet, our customers don’t need to buy, install or support any hardware or software – ever.

Q: Is CrownPeak Search reliable?
A:  CrownPeak provides a Service Level Agreement (SLA) covering each aspect of our services.  It guarantees uptime, support levels, disaster recovery program, maintenance procedures, and so on.  Because the application and all of the data lives entirely in memory, results are incredibly fast.  CrownPeak shares the application and the data across multiple machines, adding redundancy and speed.  The server with the fastest response time is the server that delivers on the next request.  Because data lives on multiple machines, a crashed machine has no effect on performance.  As with all of the CrownPeak applications, CrownPeak Search is hosted at IBM’s highly secure, Tier 1 data centers, for added reliability.

Q: Is CrownPeak Search secure?
A: Yes.  CrownPeak Search is able to respect permissions and other security measures, returning search results and content only to those authorized to view them.  CrownPeak Search is fully supported and managed 24/7/365. 

Q: How do I get CrownPeak Search working?
A: It's pretty simple.  First, a small chunk of code needs to be put into every spot on a site where a search box will appear.  That code can be inserted into every page, or can be added into a standard navigation header or other "include" type file.  Here’s an example of what that code would be like:
<form action="http://search.crownpeak.com/cpt_search/result_1">
<input type="hidden" name="account" value="[your account id]">
<b>Search My Site</b><br>
<input size=20 type="text" name="keywords"><br>
<input type="submit" value="Search">
</form>

CrownPeak can insert that code for our clients, or our clients can do it themselves.  If the CrownPeak CMS (or another high-end CMS) is in use, that code can be inserted automatically.

Next, CrownPeak creates custom results pages and configures the system.  For example, we can limit search to specific sections.  We can limit search results so that only people with the permission to see that piece of content will see that content in the search results.  We can expand results to show related content or clusters of content related by concepts.  We can manually promote specific results to appear when a keyword or list of keywords is entered.  We take complete responsibility for making search work exactly as our clients need it to.

Q: Can we buy CrownPeak Search as a stand-alone application?
A: Yes.  CrownPeak Search is a stand-alone application, and is available as part of our suite of services or as its own separate service.  It is only available as a hosted application.

Q: What features are included in the basic CrownPeak Search fees?
A: All of the capabilities of CrownPeak Search are included in our standard fees.  Those capabilities include E-Commerce Search, Promotions, Clustering, Security, etc.   Of course, because CrownPeak is a Software Service, support, management, and maintenance are also included as part of the standard monthly fees.

Q: What skills do we need to manage and administer the CrownPeak Search system?
A: The CrownPeak Search administration system is designed for use by non-technical web site managers and content managers. 

Q: Does CrownPeak Search offer "Advanced" search?
A: Yes.  CrownPeak Search supports category search, relevance ranking adjustments, display adjustments, meta-data search, and pretty much every other type of relevance and display adjustment out there.  CrownPeak offers over 40 separate types of relevance parameters in our standard configuration .

Q: What is "Vertical Search"
A: A search engine spiders a site and then returns relevant results to a query.  It’s possible for a search engine to be pointed at many sites (think of Google or Yahoo) and deliver search across all of those sites.  “Vertical Search” is a search across a specific set of sites to deliver much more specific information.  For example, one could search only sites (or sections of sites) that have reviews of restaurants in Boston.  By using a custom taxonomy for restaurants and for Boston, those reviews could be divided by type of cuisine, section of the city, price range, and so on.  That would be an example of vertical search.

CrownPeak Search supports vertical search.  We have great client examples.  Ask us about it: sales@crownpeak.com.

Q: Can I promote a certain result to the top of a search results page?
A: Yes.  That's a standard feature of CrownPeak Search.  We also provide tracking on all search query results, so you'll know how many people clicked on that link as compared to the other links from that particular query.

Q: Does CrownPeak provide services to ensure that CrownPeak Search is "tuned" as our site changes?
A: Yes.  As anybody who has set up and managed a search system has learned, the search system needs to be "tuned" over time, because new content is added, the site structure may change, the types of queries site visitors make may change.  CrownPeak provides search tuning as part of our service.  We review the site search results and the behavior of the searchers.  We then schedule a call with our customer (typically once a quarter) and go over our findings.  We typically have a few recommendations for adjustments to the search system, addition of synonyms to point searchers to results, and adjustments, etc.  Our clients typically ok our recommendations and we tweak the system for them.