^{Date Published: 17 Dec 2010 8:56am}

AFAC is pleased to announce the arrival of a new, significantly more powerful, helpful and easier to use and interpret search engine for our Knowledge Web.

With large websites that contain a wide scope of content, topics and research, it can be very difficult locating what you’re after without giving up in frustration.

Our new search engine is powered by Funnelback, a sophisticated search solution (originally developed by CSIRO) that enables you, the searcher, to explore vast volumes of information efficiently by providing you with speedy search results alongside contextual and subjective tools to make assist you in locating what you're after.

What this means is this: if a user searches for ‘bushfire arson’, not only will a much more accurate list of returns be displayed than before, but the user will be prompted with tools that break down those results by context (location, type of research, etc) and by subject matter if the engine detects that a search query was more general (such as ‘arson’ vs. ‘Newcastle fire study’).

The benefits:

• Searches across the breadth of our online information
• Significantly reduces searching time
• Easier to read and interpret search interface that is more familiar to users than the previous Knowledge Web search page
• Fast and accurate returns that displays publically available and member’s only content
• Funnelback search engine allows AFAC to track precisely what people are search for which, in turn, helps us provide more of the content users demand