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