By the end of 2015, more than a fifth of revenue-generating online search facilities will include contextual information provided by Cloud-based services compared to a mere 2% today, according to Gartner.
Whit Andrews, a vice president and distinguished analyst at the researcher, said that such contextual data would be particularly valuable to organisations providing information services to both customers and staff as it tended to make search results more relevant.
"Improving results reduces the time spent searching and increases the value of searches, which results in quantifiable improvements in how some workers such as customer service representatives conduct their duties," he added.
As a result, rather than continue to provide in-house search facilities only, many organisations would begin to include cloud-based services into their online search offerings. But social networking sites could also help to improve quality.
Andrews cited the example of Facebook, which enables users to carry their portable identities with them as they move around the web. "This offers the potential for web search to improve relevancy based on a user’s explicit statements of interest and their network of fellow users," he said.
In addition to potentially lower costs, context-based cloud services could also provide a standardised way of "delivering information to augment queries that can improve search results significantly. Most importantly, it offers a source of rich profile data that aids in setting a context for individual searches," Andrews said.
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