Google upgrades Mini

Includes new date and source bias functionality

Google has upgraded its Mini enterprise search tool, including new capabilities to improve the relevance of results and extend the reach of the product.

The Mini is Google's lower end search appliance for firms looking to search up to 300,000 documents. The latest version now includes the ability to search files and documents stored on shared drives, and support for six more languages - Basque, Catalan, Galician, Greek, Hungarian, and Polish.

Google Mini also features new technology which allows users to sort results by date or source.

"Many customers have told us that they want to tell us which documents are more valuable within their own companies – for instance, published marketing collateral is more authoritative than the first draft," wrote Google's enterprise product manager Cyrus Mistry on the Google Enterpsie Blog. " Sometimes, files from a certain server are less important and shouldn't clog the search results page. Source Biasing enables users to give us URL patterns and tell us if they should be weighted higher or lower."

Mike Davis of analyst firm Ovum argued that the new features should enhance productivity among users.

"One of the certainties of information access is that if it's truly open, people will see everything – and that can be too much information to make decisions," he explained. "I can see that these sorts of features could be useful if an organisation wants to make sure it stays in control of the stuff sitting on its intranet."