Case Study | Google Search Appliance

FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority) brings speed and pinpoint accuracy to website search with the Google Search Appliance

At a Glance What they wanted to do • Enable busy industry professionals and investors to find information quickly and accurately • Bring user-tailored search results into a complex and compliance-intensive financial industry website What they did • Leveraged Google Search as a critical component of a major web overhaul • Made content more “findable” with custom, audience-tailored KeyMatches What they accomplished • Ensured accuracy for specific audiences through the power of the Google Search Appliance • Minimized IT management and maintenance requirements

Business The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) is the largest nongovernmental regulator for all securities firms doing business in the United States overseeing nearly 5,000 brokerage firms, 174,000 branch offices, and approximately 676,000 registered securities representatives. Created in July 2007 through the consolidation of NASD and the member regulation, enforcement, and arbitration functions of the New York Stock Exchange, FINRA is dedicated to investor protection and market integrity through effective, efficient regulation and complementary compliance and technology-based services. FINRA touches virtually every aspect of the securities business – from registering and educating industry participants to examining securities firms, writing rules, enforcing those rules and the federal securities laws, informing and educating the investing public, providing trade reporting and other industry utilities, and administering the largest dispute resolution forum for investors and registered firms. Challenge The FINRA.org website plays a crucial role for FINRA in accomplishing its multifaceted mission. A wide variety of industry professionals frequent the site, including security industry compliance officers, arbitration professionals, and registered representatives in firms of all sizes. The site also caters to individual investors looking for education, investor alerts, and other pertinent information. Containing more than 25,000 files packed with detailed regulatory-oriented information, FINRA.org receives 500,000 visitors and more than four million page views monthly. Around 20% of these visitors use search to find what they need.

“The bottom line: we are very happy with the GSA. It simplified the process of implementing targeted, audience-specific search, it’s low-maintenance, and it continues to be a benefit in our effort to enable users to find everything on our site with ease.”– Steve Fleckenstein, Director of Web Services One of FINRA’s biggest challenges is helping its many diverse audiences find the content they need, quickly. The bulk of FINRA.org visitors are busy investment professionals who must deal with an overwhelming level of complexity in keeping up with ever-changing securities industry regulations and requirements. “Improving the user experience and helping people find the right information fast is among our top priorities,” says Steve Fleckenstein, FINRA’s Director of Web Services. Futhermore, the FINRA team wanted to increase access to its growing body of sitebased applications. As Fleckenstein explains, “We have a lot of unique content and applications, from investor alerts to tools like BrokerCheck, a free way for investors to check the professional background of current and former

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FINRA-registered securities firms and brokers.” Page view numbers doubled or tripled when visitors to the site’s applications were factored in. “People spent a significant amount of time on our site and typically checked out multiple pages while they were there.” It was critical to ensure success for users when they searched across content or in applications. FINRA needed confidence that search would take the right users to the right results. Solution To achieve this, FINRA conducted a significant site re-architecture. Rather than exposing all site content to all visitors, the FINRA web team created separate content repositories and user interfaces, each tailored for specific audiences: investment professionals and compliance officers, investors in the general public, and arbitration/mediation professionals. Then, the team harnessed the power of the Google Search Appliance (GSA) and its KeyMatches capability to ensure targeted search accuracy for each of these user types. Fleckenstein says the GSA added great value to the site revamp. “We’ve had substantial experience with other search tools,” says Fleckenstein. “The GSA made it easy to handle tailored access to subcollections of data and deliver customized front ends, including promoting specific pages on the site via KeyMatches.” Benefits Whether they are personal or professional investors, arbitrators, or compliance officers, visitors to FINRA.org now have a far easier time finding what they are looking for. The revamped site, along with the GSA, helps improve the user experience. For example, if users type “annuity” into the search box, GSA lets FINRA tailor KeyMatches much more effectively with “customized” results for each audience. Users can also use Related Queries in the GSA, which associate alternative words or queries with specific search terms to help users find what they need. “People tell us the user experience is greatly enhanced now,” says Fleckenstein. “We’re working to further improve users’ search results by refining KeyMatches in the GSA and making better use of synonyms. We are also tapping into the reporting and analysis tools in GSA to determine which types of users are searching for which content, and changing the site accordingly.” Fleckenstein notes that the GSA is exceptionally easy to maintain, requiring only a small fraction of the time of two staff members. It also provides the flexibility and efficiency of altering KeyMatches by uploading a .csv file, rather than having to conduct manual updates. As a next step, the organization is working on providing the option for users to search content site-wide. FINRA is also exploring the GSA features such as Dynamic Results Clustering to further improve the search experience. “The bottom line: we are very happy with the GSA,” says Fleckenstein. “It simplified the process of implementing targeted, audience-specific search, it’s low-maintenance, and it continues to be a benefit in our effort to enable users to find everything on our site with ease.”

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