# Presentation: 431514

## NASA Portal Search 

***NASA Portal Search ***
***Google Appliance Search Engine Relevance Ranking Test Results***
**http://mediaservices.nasa.gov/search/search**
** **
**September 2005**

## Initial Setup

**Google indexing**
- Initially opened to open discovery.
- More than 13 million documents discovered
- Eliminated some logical groups of documents which can be added as separate collections in Verity (e.g. 6 million forum threads)
- Eliminated other’s based on mime type
- Presently Status
- Total indexed Documents = 2,262,596
- Total document Crawled = 5M
- Total Documents reached by Crawler = **6161504**
- Total NASA domains crawled = 1450

## Test Methodology

**General Relevance**
- Results provided on the first page were ranked on a relative scale of 0 to 5 with 5 being the highest.  The rules used for ranking were somewhat subjective, however for a given URL that was presented on one engine’s result the same relavence was applied to that URL on the others.  So, the same weight was carried across all engines.
**Authoritative Answers**
- Results that were assigned a “5” had to be both topically and timely.  For example, a result on STS-114 from 1999 while topically relevant was reduced to a 3 because of it not being timely.  The authoritative results had to be the exact page and not a subordinate page to the exact page.  Subordinate pages were classified as “support” pages and assigned a weighing of “4’

## Terms tested

**Test terms were based on combination of top 30 serach terms in the past 6 months as well as the top 30 from the month of July.  The resulting merged list was 36 terms.**

- columbia
- Countdown
- Mars
- challenger
- webcam
- apollo
- shuttle
- countdown clock
- nasa tv
- voyager
- games
- venus

- solar system
- mercury
- earth
- worldwind
- Pluto
- pictures
- discovery
- launch
- iss
- space station
- space shuttle
- deep impact

- Shuttles
- Shuttle Launch
- Live
- Hubble
- Moon
- Titan
- Saturn
- Apollo 11
- Jupiter
- Tsunami
- Planets
- Cassini

## Summary Table of Results 

## Combined Results

## Synonym Tweaking

**Authoritative relevance improved to 100% **
- Google provides synonym tools for adding authoritative results.
**The following synonyms have been added **
- Cassini
- countdown
- images
- live
- nasa
- nasa tv
- picture
- pictures
- shuttle
- shuttle launch
- Shuttles
- http://mediaservices.nasa.gov/search/search

## Thesaurus integration

**Thesaurus integration**** **
- 95,000 word English Thesaurus
- 22,000 term NASA Thesaurus
**Provides alternative results as:**
- Broader or narrower terms
- Related terms

## Functional test to demonstrate features

**keyword: “sts 114”  and click search.  This should return “NASA - Return to Flight” in the first line (this is manually added URL) **
**keyword: “a1” and click search.  On the left side you should see “Are You Looking For” items.  Click on “A-1 aircraft”. You should see additional categories on the left side.  **
**keyword: “Skyraider aircraft” and click search. Fourth item in the result set is indented. **
**keyword: “nasa” and click search.  This should bring up Best Bets item: “About NASA”.  Click on “About NASA” will take you to About NASA page. **
**keyword: “Apollo applications program” and click search. Third item in the result set is indented and it contains “[More results...” link.  Click on this link to perform site specific search. **
**keyword: “earth resources” and click search.  This keyword returns a large number of “Suggested Broader or Narrower Terms” and “Related Terms”, use Next and Prev button to navigate through these items **
**Keyword: “nasas” and click search. Spelling correction **
**Keyword: “3” numeric three . It will suggest the  synonym. There are  95,000 definitions of synonym,  as well as 22,000 NASA thesaurus terms. **

## Deployment Plan

**Present to the EB Board ****and Web Managers**
- Allow testing by the EB board
- Address and issues that arise
**Target production date 9/22 **