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Google Mini - Administrator Features

A combined hardware and software search appliance, the Google Mini is a 1U rack mountable server that comes with all the horsepower you need to add Google search to your organization's website or intranet. The Mini comes versions capable of indexing from 50,000 up to 300,000 documents. It can index over 220 different file formats and virtually any language.

Learn how to set up and administer the Google Mini

Installation, Integration & Deployment

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The Google Mini is easy to install and even easier to maintain. You can usually install and configure the Google Mini in less than an hour.

The Google Mini fits easily into any standard data center rack. After setting it up in your data center, you’ll connect it to your network with an Ethernet cable, provide basic network settings – for example, an IP address – and then configure and manage it through an intuitive web-based interface.

Because the Mini accesses content over your internal network, there’s no need to connect it directly to a server and no limit on the number of servers it can crawl.

Accessing Your Content

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Once the Google Mini is connected to your network, the first step is to provide access to your content. The Google Mini can crawl over 220 different file formats, including HTML, PDF, and Microsoft Office documents, and automatically detects more than 28 languages. New versions support from 50,000 up to 300,000 documents.

To be crawled by the Google Mini, documents need to be web-enabled (i.e., accessible by HTTP or HTTPS protocol) or reside on networked file systems. The Google Mini accesses documents much the same way as a user with a web browser does. See the Initial Crawl description for more info on accessing documents in file shares and content management systems.

The Google Mini uses your document's inherent link structure to find all the files on your network, so administrators don't have to enter individual document locations, and publishers don't have to change the way they publish documents. You might be surprised by how much stuff the Mini finds on your network!

The Initial Crawl

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Once the Google Mini is connected to your network, the first step is to provide access to your content. Simply enter a few starting points – URLs, or document locations – and the Mini will automatically find and scan all your documents (you can also define areas of your site that you don’t want the Google Mini to crawl as easily as you enter starting URLs). The length of time required for the initial crawl depends on various factors – the number of documents, size of documents and speed of your servers, etc. – but the Mini should be able crawl all your content in just a few hours.

Administrators can allow the Google Mini to crawl content located in content management systems by web-enabling the content. Most content management systems (for example, Microsoft SharePoint) include an option to display content in a web-enabled format.

The new Mini now offers two crawling options. The Mini's Continuous Crawler mode automatically detects sections of a site that change and crawl them more frequently. Or its Scheduled Crawler mode enables an administrator to set the the Mini to crawl the entire site at a specific recurring time.

Business Owners

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Once it’s up and running, the Google Mini offers a variety of customization options.

  • OneBox for Enterprise [pdf]: Provide users with easy access to an infinite variety of information sources from inside or outside the company – right from the search box. Google OneBox for Enterprise provides access to up-to-the-minute information across virtually all enterprise applications and services -- including information stored in Cognos, Cisco, Employease, Netsuite, Oracle, Salesforce.com, and SAS systems. Learn more about this new approach to accessing business information.
  • Integrate with document security systems: The Mini can crawl and serve search results for content protected by HTTP Basic and NTLM v1 and v2 security, as well as integration with LDAP systems. The new Mini release enables both authentication and authorization at serve time; so you can make sure individual users see only the results they are approved to access.
  • Collections: Suppose you want your customer support team to be able to search a knowledge base and simultaneously let your marketing team search through product presentations. Or suppose you want to run your public site search and your intranet search off of one Google Mini. You can use collections to create sections of your index for particular sets of users. Each collection will have a separate URL and can have a separate search interface.
  • Integrate search results into your site's look and feel: The Google Mini lets you give your search results page any look and feel you desire by providing a web-based wizard interface to make cosmetic changes. If you want to further integrate the search interface into your site, you can upload an XSLT style sheet. For the ultimate in customization, you can get search results in XML and use them in your site or intranet in a variety of contexts.
  • KeyMatch: The Google Mini lets you promote links to the top of your search results, much like the ads you often see on Google.com results pages. This lets you promote new products on your public website, or point employees to important documents on your intranet.
  • Synonyms: Are you finding that customers can't find laptop computers on your website because you call them “notebook computers”? The Google Mini lets you create synonyms to associate relevant words, so that when a user searches for “laptop,” they'll learn they should also try “notebook computer.”
  • Display key attributes of search results: Suppose you want to display the author of a document or a product's price and picture when it appears on your search results pages? The Google Mini lets you do this through meta tags which you can put in the “head” of your web pages.
  • Filter results through meta tags: What if you want to show products in a certain category when your users search your product pages? The Google Mini allows you to filter results to only show documents whose meta tags have specific values.
  • Excluding pages from the search index: The Google Mini let you specify certain pages or types of pages that you want to keep out of your search index. These can be exact URLs, or you can use regular expressions to determine patterns of URLs to exclude (for example, all images or all log files).
  • Integrates with Google Desktop and Google Toolbar for Enterprise : Give users the power to search their email, web pages they've viewed and documents on their desktop with Google Desktop for Enterprise. Google Toolbar gives users easy access to Google , instant search suggestions, and a pop-up blocker. Both integrate with the Google Mini to give users access to intranet search right from their desktops.

Reporting

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The Google Mini's extensive reporting capability lets you know how your end users are using search. The Google Mini's summary reports (for date ranges that you specify) include:

  • Total number of searches and unique queries
  • Number of searches on a particular day
  • Average number of searches at different hours of the day
  • Top 100 keywords and queries

In addition, when the Mini crawls your website or intranet, it reports back which URLs it included in its index and any errors that it encountered (e.g., broken links). A new report also allows you to see what pages are in your crawler's queue.

Finally, the Google Mini gives you access to its exhaustive query logs so you can see what queries were entered at what times.

If you intend to use the Google Mini for your public website, you will also receive a Google Analytics account for free to study your search engine's effectiveness as users navigate your website. The Google Mini can also automatically build a sitemap you can submit to Google Webmaster Tools so that Google.com can discover and crawl your website's content.

Customer Support

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Two years of full customer support and hardware replacement coverage is included with the Google Mini. With this support package, we provide:

  • 24/7 access to our customer support site with documentation, FAQs, software updates, and user forums
  • Full-service email support for every aspect of the Google Mini. That means you have access to information and assistance from experts on the hardware, the software, and even the operating system
  • Guaranteed replacements in the case of any hardware failure

For more details, see http://www.google.com/enterprise/support.html

Technical Specs

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  • Form factor: 1U rack mountable server
  • Dimensions: 16.8" (W) x 14.6" (D) x 1.7" (H)
  • Weight: 17.00 Lbs
  • Voltage: 100V-240V
  • Electrical Frequency: 47-63Hz
  • Max input line current: 6 amps @ 120 V, 3 amps at 240 volts
  • Thermal requirement: 1130 BTU/hour
  • Environmental requirements: 50-95 degrees Fahrenheit