FAST Unveils Search Derivative Application for the Growing Online Directories and Classifieds Market
Oslo, Norway (ots/PRNewswire)
- FAST AdVisor Enables Online Directories and Classified Publishers to Significantly Improve the Search and Discovery Capabilities of their Sites While Boosting Advertising Revenues
Fast Search & Transfer(TM) (FAST(TM)) (OSE: FAST), the leading developer of enterprise search and real-time alerting technologies, today announced FAST AdVisor(TM), an enterprise-wide software solution that facilitates the introduction between buyers and suppliers for Internet Yellow Pages (IYP), Business to Consumer (B2C) and Business to Business (B2B) verticals, online classifieds, and traditional publishers. By improving the overall search experience, consumers can now more quickly discover relevant information, and advertisers can more accurately connect to these customers and increase the volume of qualified leads to their sites. This in turn drives greater advertising revenue streams for the online directories and publishers.
Leveraging FAST ESP(TM), FAST's award-winning enterprise search platform, FAST AdVisor aggregates information from any structured and unstructured data source, including not only the publisher's own proprietary content, but also advertiser, third-party and web content. It provides organizations with a flexible and powerful relevancy framework that allows them meet their business and advertising objectives by controlling the user experience through InPerspective(TM), FAST's rank tuning module, while consistently providing the user with superior search results. FAST AdVisor also includes advanced navigation and drill down capabilities, allowing users to do multi-level sorting of their search results by a variety of parameters. For example, when looking at job listings, the user could navigate or sort on title, pay, date, and location (such as geography and distance), enabling them to find the most relevant jobs within their local area or within a radius of a specific location. Using multi-level sorting, the end-user is in control of how the results are displayed, providing the most important and most relevant information for that end-user. And the business manager defines the rules for how advertisers are seen - for example, by the level of investment, how long they have been a customer, etc.
FAST AdVisor also includes powerful linguistics capabilities that ensure the end-user is quickly and easily able to find what they are looking for. These capabilities include multi-lingual dictionary and synonym management, spell-checking, plus a broad set of additional features. With the analytics and reporting features of FAST AdVisor, the online directory provider can tune the system based upon how end users are searching and navigating. Finally, the system also includes full administrative functions that allow the IT department to manage the system on a day-to-day basis.
"The flexibility of our FAST ESP technology is enabling FAST to take search to unprecedented levels with a new and innovative search derivative application (SDA) specifically for online directories and classified publishers," said Ali Riaz, FAST's chief operating officer. "Jupiter Research expects online advertising from paid search, online classifieds, and display advertisements to grow from $6 billion in 2003 to over $15 billion in 2008. FAST AdVisor supplies IYPs and online directories with the tools required to collect these growing online advertising revenues by dramatically improving the search experience for their customers and by increasing business transactions for their advertisers."
"We expect local search to grow dramatically, and it is becoming increasingly important for online directories and classifieds publishers to provide the best possible search functionality to improve the user experience and to drive traffic and advertising revenues," commented Greg Sterling, Managing Editor and Program Manager at The Kelsey Group, a leading research firm specializing in Yellow Pages, electronic directories and local media. "Search is becoming a kind of universal interface for these types of applications and FAST's platform and technology are state of the art."
FAST AdVisor is the second of three planned Search Derivative Applications (SDAs) to be introduced to the market by FAST this year. Rather than requiring totally separate development efforts and implementation, FAST's SDAs are effectively developed based on the flexible framework of the FAST ESP platform. This increases FAST's development focus, improves efficiency in support resources, and minimizes investments in physical equipment. FAST AdVisor indexes source material from more than 225 data formats and 77 languages, and continuously monitors the information flow to ensure that new or updated information regularly refreshes the intelligence index.
Fast Search & Transfer (FAST) has transformed enterprise search from a powerful, yet narrowly perceived function, into an enterprise-wide strategic and tactical capability of pivotal importance. FAST ESP and the FAST portfolio of solutions and SDAs are the latest in a line of FAST technology that marries a no-technical-boundaries approach with a clear understanding of real-world requirements, including extraordinary performance, precise accuracy, broad reach, and high return on investment. For FAST, the search never stops.
For further information on FAST AdVisor, please see: www.fastsearch.com/fastadvisor .
About FAST
FAST creates the real-time search and filter technology solutions that are behind the scenes at the world's best known companies with the most demanding search problems. FAST's flexible and scalable integrated technology platform elevates the search capabilities of enterprise customers and connects people to the relevant information they seek regardless of medium. This drives revenues and reduces total cost of ownership by effectively leveraging IT infrastructure. FAST's powerful enterprise search technology solutions are used by a wide range of global customers and partners, including AT&T, Cardinal Health, CareerBuilder.com, Chordiant, CIGNA, CNET, Dell, Fidelity Investments, Findexa, FirstGov.gov (GSA), IBM, Knight Ridder, LexisNexis, Overture, Rakuten, Reed Elsevier, Reuters, Sensis, Tenet Healthcare, Thomas Industrial Networks, T-Online, US Army, Virgilio (Telecom Italia), Vodafone, and Wanadoo.
FAST is headquartered in Norway and is publicly traded under the ticker symbol 'FAST' on the Oslo Stock Exchange. The FAST Group operates globally with presence in Europe, the United States, and Japan. Additionally, the FAST Group has business partners and customers in a number of other locations, such as Brazil, Canada and Australia. For further information about FAST, please visit www.fastsearch.com.
Contact:
Press Contact: Peter Gorman, Director of Corporate Communications
(US), +1-781-304-2495, Peter.Gorman@fastsearch.com