AddSearch vs. Google Search Appliance (discontinued)

We're very happy with the search results, and even better, the ability to impact the actual results with their weighting and priority tools. The integration was easy enough, but the expectations during the sales process was that the AddSearch team would handle more of the implementation. At the end of the day this wasn't a huge deal due to our internal engineering team, but is a caveat for others. We're happy to see continued development of the product and the infusion of AI in the feature set.

Incentivized

The Google Search Appliance is well suited to most site search needs and it is possible to customize the front end seen by website visitors to produce a satisfactory basic interface with basic branding applied to it. However, in some situations it may be necessary to instead make API calls from a web page to retrieve search results and the format in which those results are returned might be a little more difficult to work with.

Incentivized

• Ease of use for admin
• Ability to impact results
• Integration within your own site
• Data
• Product improvements

Incentivized

• Homes in on key searches.
• Immediate response.
• Simple UI, very user-friendly.

Incentivized

• Data exports
• Onboarding and expectation setting

Incentivized

• It's my understanding that Google is ending support for the appliance soon. This is obviously an important consideration.
• The administrator interface is far from easy to use.
• There is a significant learning curve for new users.

Incentivized

Neutral rating because I've never needed support.

Incentivized

AddSearch was not as customizable as the other solutions we looked at, but it was also seemed to be the easiest to integrate. Ultimately, the integration time took longer than expected, but was still relatively easy. The interface was an easier to use interface than the competitors we looked at. Price was also a factor as AddSearch was a lower cost.

Incentivized

Google search has always been superior. No other search engine application can even come close.

Incentivized

• Our search results have significantly improved and increased click through rate by 15% just in the first two weeks
• We had no ability to tweak results with our previous solution and now we do. We've gone from 0 to 100 with the ability on that.

Incentivized

• The GSA was not cheap. At all.
• There has also been a cost associated with our need to switch to another site search solution in the near future, due to Google ending support for the sppliance.
• That said, we have so much support content that we owed it to our customers to offer a comprehensive search tool to help them find the most relevant content - and of course Google are the masters of this. However, it's worth noting that the alogorithms used on the GSA are far older than those used on google.com.

Incentivized