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Federated Search: What It Is and Why Your Organization Needs It

While outward-facing search is vital to providing an optimized user experience, equally as critical is internal search for your employees.


When implementing a new search solution, many companies focus on implementing a search that is customer-facing, like their app or website search. While outward-facing search is vital to providing an optimized user experience, it’s also important to provide a seamless search experience internally, for your employees. 

As your business grows, so do your resources. Your employees may want to access information across your website, your intranet, and other platforms all at once. Which means you need a search tool that can handle all the content you offer. Does this sound like your current search situation? If so, it may be time to consider implementing a Federated Search. 

What is Federated Search? 

Federated Search, also known as knowledge management search (or cross-domain search), is search technology that can retrieve information from multiple sources simultaneously. With Federated Search, one search query can lead to search results from a diverse range of platforms all within the same interface. This eliminates the need to search numerous websites, databases or documents because all of these sources will be indexed within one all-inclusive federated search.  

In many organizations, employees have access to dozens of systems and platforms that they use almost daily. By implementing a federated search, you can provide structure to your overall search experience while increasing employee efficiency. 

The Benefits of Federated Search 

Better User Experience 

Search users often know that what they’re searching for exists, they just don’t know where to find it. Federated Search locates search results that may be hidden deep within a site or database, saving time that would have otherwise been spent searching and sifting. The less a user has to click around, the more satisfied they will be with the overall user experience and the faster they can get back to work.  

Improved Search Relevance 

By combining all of your indexable content into one federated search engine, you’re increasing the overall volume of accessible information. With this volume increase, the likelihood of search results being relevant increases due to more information being available.  

Search Scalability 

When an organization has multiple teams managing websites, apps and document databases, it can be common for content to be outdated or irrelevant. One benefit of a federated search is how easy it is to integrate new pages or documents within your search as they are created.  

Information Security 

With Federated Search you only have to manage one search engine, making it easy to maintain information security. You also have the power to serve different search results based on an individual’s access level. Meaning you can ensure each employee has access only to the data or information they need. 

Ready to get started? 

Now that you know how important a federated search is to your organization’s digital experience, it’s time to get started! Implementing Federated Search may seem daunting, and that’s what our search experts are here for. Let us show you what an intelligent search tool can do for your organization: see a demo of Cludo Federated Search today! 

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