De Tijd and L’Echo news websites enhance search experience with Microsoft FAST
Leuven, 3 June 2010 – When it comes to high-quality reporting, Belgium’s De Tijd and its French-language counterpart L’Echo are newspapers with excellent reputations. As part of its efforts to enhance quality, Mediafin, the publisher of these newspapers, decided to introduce FAST on its news websites, www.tijd.be and www.lecho.be, making it the first Belgian media company to select this search engine. The project was implemented by Amplexor, the specialist in enterprise content management (ECM) and web content management (WCM).
The revamped news websites of De Tijd and L’Echo were launched on 22 May. The project was aimed in part at providing readers with an even better search experience. This was achieved using FAST, an intelligent search engine that is part of Microsoft’s product range.
Mediafin engaged Amplexor, a company based in Leuven, to create a benchmark for enterprise search solutions based on the high-level business needs of the www.tijd.be and www.lecho.be websites. In the end, Microsoft’s FAST search engine was selected. A start was made on the project in October 2009, and over the next six months Amplexor installed the search engine and indexed all existing sources. Tests were conducted in April this year, and at the end of May both of the revamped websites went live.
“With regard to the revamped websites, one of our main aims has been to make it even easier for readers to access the wealth of editorial content, across all channels and databases,” said Els Sergeant, Mediafin's ICT Manager. When users type in search queries, they are sent to a faceted navigation page, where they can refine their search. Reader can search for information in the form of articles, price information, video reports and blogs. They can also specify a particular source or medium, and select associated people, companies and locations. The search engine allows users to fine-tune their searches, providing them with a top-quality search experience.
“The entire project is in keeping with the multimedia strategy pursued by De Tijd and L’Echo, which have decided to start charging for some of their online content and services in addition to launching the new search engine. For a publisher of targeted, quality media such as Mediafin, this is a key project focusing on the future,” Ms Sergeant explained.
Ms Sergeant summed up the working relationship with Amplexor in just a few sentences. “I knew about Amplexor from other enterprise content management projects. I was satisfied with every aspect of the way they approached the project back then, just as I am now. Their on-site team, for instance, adapted to our internal business culture very quickly and managed the project effectively, which is not easy to do in an extremely dynamic working environment such as ours.”