Google takes enterprise search to Salesforce

Google has upgraded its enterprise search tools, adding the ability to access data held in Salesforce customer relationship management (CRM) systems.

The updated Google Search Appliance (GSA) connectors let users search across multiple data stores such as SharePoint that are held by a company on premise or in the cloud, bringing together the results on one page like it does for the web.

A user can search for a term and return results from data held in systems such as SharePoint, Documentum and Google Apps and now cloud-based Salesforce, said Google Enterprise product manager Jeff Ling.

"With this connector, the GSA can search all content in Salesforce, providing sales, marketing, and customer support personnel instant access to the information they need every day," Ling wrote in a blog post.

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"Additionally, given that the GSA already searches content in Google Apps, and now searches Salesforce, our customers know our unrivaled commitment to searching content wherever it reside on-premise, or in the cloud."

Such access will help boost the amount of information companies can pull out of the CRM and other content management systems, Ling claimed.

The connectors can be downloaded from Google's Enterprise Labs.

Comparing results

Google's Enterprise Labs also announced a new comparison tool to let users test settings or even search appliances to see which offer the best results.

The Side-by-Side function shows employees two panes with separate results, so they can compare the relevancy and vote for which they prefer.

"For instance, you might want to compare the results you get from your existing search solution with what you get from the Google Search Appliance (GSA)," wrote product manager Cyrus Mistry in a blog post. "You might want to compare two different back-end settings for the GSA, or two different solutions altogether."