OSLO, Norway, April 23 /PRNewswire/ --

- Six Local Newspapers Team Up to Provide Specialized Search Service for Soccer Fans; FAST ESP Allows Users to Easily Navigate Wide Variety of Local Content on Sport

Fast Search & Transfer(TM) (OSEAX: FAST.OL) (FAST(TM)), the leading global provider of search technologies, today announced that 100% Fotball, a soccer search service launched through collaboration between six Norwegian newspapers, has gone live powered by the award-winning FAST Enterprise Search Platform (FAST ESP(TM)).

100% Fotball is a collaboration between six Norwegian newspapers: Faedrelandsvennen, Bergens Tidende, Adresseavisen, Stavanger Aftenblad, Aftenposten and Bladet Tromso, together representing about 25% of the total circulation in Norway. Adresseavisen, based in Trondheim and the major newspaper in the region, is responsible for providing the 100% Fotball service to other newspapers within the cooperative, and journalists from all the participating newspapers contribute soccer related articles to the service.

The 100% Fotball service previously relied on an external search solution that did not allow for much flexibility in tailoring results for users. Since implementing FAST ESP, the site can now offer an optimal search experience by fine-tuning relevancy to local team information and including relevant information from other sources like soccer match results, player and Wikipedia information.

"We have been able to add several features that drastically enhance the user experience, like different search profiles and boosting of local teams for each regional newspaper," commented Rolf Dyrnes Svendsen, Digital Editor at Adresseavisen. "We are also particularly pleased with the community-related service that allows users to view similar searches performed by others. Surely our users now have a unique possibility to navigate in our rich media site."

In addition to tailoring searches, the solution provides advanced linguistics for Norwegian, entity extraction, query completion based on players, teams and previous searches as well as a crawler for soccer related articles from Norwegian Wikipedia. Adresseavisen uses a publication system from Escenic, and an Escenic connector developed by the FAST partner Comperio.

"Being able to offer localized content that is relevant to the user is becoming more and more of a key differentiator for regional newspapers, and search-powered solutions allow for exactly that," said Dr. John M. Lervik, FAST's CEO and co-founder. "We see that portals are being populated and content enhanced by search, making for a better and deeper user experience, increasing a site's stickiness and thereby heightening it's potential advertising revenue. This is a win-win situation for both the users and newspapers."

About 100% Fotball Please click on the following links to view the service: http://fotball.adressa.no http://fotball.aftenposten.no http://fotball.fvn.no http://fotball.smp.no http://fotball.itromso.no http://fotball.aftenbladet.no http://fotball.bt.no

About FAST

FAST is the leading global provider of enterprise search technologies and solutions that are behind the scenes at the world's most innovative companies. FAST's flexible and scalable enterprise search platform (FAST ESP) elevates an organization's search capabilities, connecting people to relevant information, regardless of format or where that information resides. This drives revenues and reduces total cost of ownership by effectively leveraging IT infrastructure. FAST's solutions are used by more than 2,600 global customers and partners, including America Online (AOL), Cardinal Health, CareerBuilder.com, CIGNA, CNET, Dell, Factiva, Fidelity Investments, Findexa, IBM, Knight Ridder, LexisNexis, Overture, Rakuten, Reed Elsevier, Reuters, Sensis, Stellent, Tenet Healthcare, Thomas Industrial Networks, T-Online, US Army, Virgilio (Telecom Italia), 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, Asia Pacific, Australia, South America, and the Middle East. For further information about FAST, please visit http://www.fastsearch.com.

(C) 2008 Fast Search & Transfer ASA - Fast Search & Transfer, FAST, Adaptive Information Warehouse, AIW, AdMomentum, Impulse and Hubway are trademarks of Fast Search & Transfer ASA. The FAST logo, FAST ESP, FAST InStream, FAST InPerspective, FAST ProPublish, FAST Contextual Insight and FAST Unity are registered trademarks of Fast Search & Transfer ASA. All rights reserved.

Web site: http://www.fastsearch.com

Carine Zeier (EMEA), +47-48-01-13-47, or Silvie Casanova (US), +1-781-304-2545, both of FAST PR, pr@fastsearch.com