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That is good news.
Freeserve provides a reasonable stream of traffic, and this is another useful 'anti-googledependancy' result.
FAST Data Search will be the key technology underpinning all of the search and navigation features on Freeserve.com.
FAST Data Search was capable of delivering superior results to our users and is flexible and robust enough to search across numerous types of information with sub-second response at the performance level we required
So Google isn't up to the task then!
Be interested to see how this will affect the PPC results supplied by Overture, because the press release did say that "all" search results will be supplied by FAST.
All Google need now is to lose Yahoo and maybe all that talk about Teoma being the daddy might be true!
That's where the money is, no question.
I think you also need to look at the profile of the sort of end user "typically" that use Freeserve. They are likely to be people who have wandered in to PC World, Dixons, Curry's and bought a PC (with Freeserve pre-installed and the broadband CD's a plenty). The users will then spend 2-3 months getting to grips with the internet and find other search engines (normally Google, maybe they know Yahoo/AV from the old books stocked in the shops.
I have one client who sells computer bits who does very well out of Freeserve for searches, who doesn't pay to be on Overture. Guess his offering suits that type of client.
Interesting times though.
"As was correctly stated in your forum, FAST's deal with Freeserve is
for FAST Data Search to be the key technology underpinning all of the
internal search and navigation features on Freeserve.com. Currently FAST
Web Search does not provide the "search the web" feature, however our
two companies will collaborate on future search offerings together."
