Section 8.3. Search Is Not an IT Thing

8.3. Search Is Not an IT Thing

Search engines are the foundation of search systems, and search engines are software applications. And software applications aren't your business; they're something for the IT people to worry about, and select, and install, and control. Right? Well, not exactly.

Setting up a web server is an IT thing, too, but we don't assign IT staff the tasks of writing a site's content, designing its visual aspects, or developing its information architecture; ideally, those are the responsibilities of people with other kinds of expertise. Why should setting up a search system be any different? Yet, it's all too common for information architects to be told that search is off-limits.

The reason is clear: a search engine is a complex piece of technology. It often requires someone who understands the technical issuesfor example, load balancing for servers, platform limitations, and so onto be involved in search engine selection and configuration.

But ultimately, search is there for users, and it's the responsibility of the information architect to advocate for users. An information architect will typically understand more than an IT specialist about how a search engine might benefit users by leveraging metadata, how its interface could be improved, or how it should be integrated with browsing. Additionally, consider all the aspects of a search system that we covered above; the search engine is just one piece of the puzzle. There are a lot of other decisions that must be made for the whole thing to behave, well, as a system that works well for users.

Ideally, the information architect, IT specialist, and people with other types of expertise will determine their respective needs, discuss how these might impact one another, and ultimately present a unified set of requirements when evaluating search-engine applications. Unfortunately, this is not always possible for political and other reasons. That's why the information architect must be prepared to argue strongly for owning at least an equal responsibility for selecting and implementing the search engine that will best serve users, rather than the one that runs on someone's favorite platform or is written in someone's favorite programming language.