FAST Powers Site Search and Sentiment Analysis Capabilities of Associated New Media’s Online Travel Site

Fast Search & Transfer™ (FAST™), the leading developer of enterprise search and real-time alerting technologies, announced that Associated New Media (ANM) has selected the Site Search and Sentiment Analysis capabilities of FAST Enterprise Search Platform™ (FAST ESP™) for its online travel site, ThisisTravel.co.uk (www.thisistravel.co.uk), one of the leading online travel sites in the United Kingdom.

As part of the company’s plan to enhance the user experience on its ThisisTravel site, ANM required a search solution that would provide search results with extremely high relevance. In addition, ThisisTravel needed to crawl numerous travel sites and extract specific information on thousands of properties, then add this to the search experience. ANM wanted to add value to more than 130,000 independent hotel reviews by automatically analyzing the sentiment of each review – be it positive, negative, or neutral – and displaying a summary of these results to the user.

Initially, ANM anticipated the need to buy multiple solutions to get all of the capabilities they needed – a solution for search and contextual navigation, and another for sentiment analysis. Instead, FAST provided ANM with a single, yet powerful enterprise search solution that surpassed the site search functionality of its previous search solution and competing solutions, as well as replacing manual hotel reviews with automatic sentiment analysis. It also provides flexibility and scalability to grow as the site continues its trajectory of success.

“FAST is enabling ANM to offer its ThisisTravel site users new search functionality that offers a cleaner, faster and more relevant search experience,” said John M. Lervik, FAST’s chief executive officer. “This provides ANM with a higher level of customer satisfaction as it helps the customers to effectively find their travel destination of choice, and consequently also increases ANM’s revenues in the highly competitive travel industry. FAST is the only enterprise search vendor that has the flexibility and scalability to grow with them as they continue to be a leader in online travel planning.”

Based on FAST ESP, FAST’s Site Search solutions deliver enterprise-wide capabilities for organizations that want to simultaneously support general search and/or multiple specialized search functions. The solutions can be rapidly implemented with little or no impact on the enterprise’s current systems. They are meticulously designed for highly efficient operation on low-cost, high-performance commodity servers, work cooperatively with existing infrastructures, and are built to accommodate three-dimensional growth. This ensures that organizations experience the same high level of performance out of every server that gets added to the platform, with no fade-off as numbers grow.

With FAST’s automatic sentiment analysis capabilities, ThisisTravel users have the ability to view a numeric sentiment analysis of hotels based on the large number of reviews written by travelers who have visited those properties. By viewing sentiment of the information in past reviews based on a scale of 1-10, users are now able to make faster and more efficient travel decisions that meet their specific needs.

“The guided navigation and sentiment analysis capabilities found in FAST ESP are enabling ThisisTravel to reach a new level of customer satisfaction,” said Alex Saint, publisher, ThisisTravel. “Our customers now have instant access to thousands of hotel reviews from fellow travelers, aggregated from many different sources, providing them with the insight they need to make well-informed travel decisions. FAST has strengthened ThisisTravel’s position as the UK’s one-stop destination for travel planning worldwide.”

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 FAST’s portfolio of solutions and SDAs supply a complete information retrieval solution ideal for a growing number of key vertical markets and applications including e-Commerce and Internet Portals; Financial Services; Government; Life Sciences; Media and Publishing; and Telecom. For FAST, the search never stops.

ABOUT ASSOCIATED NEW MEDIA
Associated New Media (ANM) is the digital publishing division of Associated Newspapers Ltd, one of the UK's premier national newspaper groups, which publishes the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday, Evening Standard and Metro. Launched in 1995, ANM publishes some of the UK's most successful new media resources and services. For more information, please visit www.anm.co.uk.

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 more than 2,000 global customers and partners, including America Online (AOL), AT&T, Cardinal Health, CareerBuilder.com, Chordiant, CIGNA, CNET, Dell, Factiva, Fidelity Investments, Findexa, FirstGov.gov (GSA), IBM, Knight Ridder, LexisNexis, Overture, Rakuten, Reed Elsevier, Reuters, Sensis, Stellent, 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, Asia Pacific, Australia, South America, and the Middle East. For further information about FAST, please visit www.fastsearch.com.

© 2005 Fast Search & Transfer ASA - Fast Search & Transfer, FAST, FAST ESP, FAST Data Search, FAST Marketrac, FAST AdVisor, FAST InStream, FAST ImPulse, FAST Search Best Practices, FAST SBP, FAST ProPublish, FAST mSearch and the FAST four-colored logo are trademarks of Fast Search & Transfer ASA. All rights reserved. FAST disclaims any proprietary interest in the marks and names of others. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.

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