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Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Not all search is created equal - early praise for Factiva Search 2.0

The tagline for our Factiva Search 2.0 advertising campaign is "Not all search is created equal" - and early feedback from industry analysts and the media indicates that they agree.

Roger Whitehead, a senior analyst at Bloor Research wrote today in a report entitled Factiva Search 2.0 - An Images Mirror, that :

"Public search engines on the Web have taught computer users the value of search but not of good searching. Sites like Google and Yahoo! give too many off-target results to be usable as line-of-business tools. Only specialised information delivery products and services can provide the relevant, filtered and intelligent results that users can reliably act on with confidence...Factiva's new Search 2.0 service is an example of this sort of tool.

The report went on to say that:

"The objective—which I think it achieves—is to present to a relatively unskilled user a quality of result that, normally, only a trained information analyst could achieve."

Mark Chillingworth from Information World Review also praised the new search functionality:

"Information World Review was given a sneak preview of the service prior to launch and was impressed. The search interface is crisp and discreet with more than a passing resemblance to Google. Results for in-depth searches are delivered incredibly quickly. To the right of the main search results are the additional features, included related news clusters, companies, industries and subjects. It is all well laid out, well defined and easy to use."

For PR and communications professionals who need to work faster than the speed of online news production, having the power to find relevant and credible information quickly is not a luxury - rather a basic job requirement. I'm sure that our many customers in PR agencies and inhouse communications teams will see immediate benefit from this exciting new search capability.

2 Comments:

Blogger Rafael Sidi said...

Melanie, it's definetly refreshing to see an information retrieval product like this. Do you plan to include RSS feeds for search queries?

6:29 AM  
Blogger Venti said...

Hi Rafael,

Thanks for your feedback about Search 2.0 – we’re really excited about it.

RSS feeds are currently not available in the Search 2.0 preview, although we do currently support RSS feeds in Factiva.com. This market validation period, ie offering Search 2.0 via preview, is intended to help us understand how these capabilities meet the requirements of our targeted business users. Once we have analysed the feedback, we will determine where and when to include these capabilities within Factiva’s product line. Because RSS feeds are already supported, it is likely that the Search 2.0 results will be available via RSS feeds in the future.

Best regards,
Melanie

4:27 PM  

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