How is IA different for intranets versus extranets versus the internet?
IA is different for each one of these kinds of sites. Many of the IA differences hinge on who uses each kind of site, in what ways, and for what kinds of tasks. One of the recurring IA topics related to this question is labeling. Intranets and extranets have a more narrow and specified user base. Users tend to familiarize themselves with a site more than users of an internet site do. As a result, the nomenclature for intranets and extranets can (to a degree) be pulled and based on language from a company’s culture, focus, products, and work. Quite oppositely, internet sites have to come up with a naming scheme that supports a variable, unknown, and constantly global group of users who may only visit the site once. To make things more difficult, there are other challenges. With intranets, the labels cannot be rooted in jargon or too tied to specific departments that mean little to employees beyond them. With extranets, the labels have to match how enterprise customers prefer to think of
