Financial Times announces new deep search service: Newssift

Newssift, which runs in beta, is the first project to receive - FT owner - Pearson's innovation fund and is currently being handled as a work in progress. The "next generation vertical tool" uses tagging tools and semantic algorithms to refine and contextualise findings, signalling a departure from typical key word searches, by offering information on trends and developments and linking these to opinions, analyses and other related stories.

According to the Newssift website "if you type in "Asia" -- the search engine will understand that Asia is a continent. It will also understand that Japan and Korea are in Asia, so you will be able to find articles that don't even contain the word "Asia" but that are nonetheless about Asia."

Erick Schonfeld said on Techcrunch.com that having tried and tested Newssift he wasn't sure that it was necessary for everyday use given the in-depth nature of the findings, but could be "a useful research tool when" needing to "dig deep into a topic."

Newssift is an initiative of Financial Times Search, a separate arm of the FT. In an article published at Ft.com, Robin Johnson, CEO of Financial Times Search said the project would initially be free to use, but could start charging at a later date, in the meantime relying only on advertising revenue. Despite significant falls in online ad spend, John Greenleaf, Newssift's chief marketing officer, is also optimistic, claiming that there has been en encouraging amount of interest shown by companies in the financial, electronics and consulting sectors.

This is not the first time that a news agency has looked at search engine optimization, as Guardian journalist, Kevin Anderson notes. Almost two years ago, Reuters bought ClearForest as a means of improving web searches, in particular, finance-related information; like Newssift, it also works by using an automated tagging system.

Search engine optimization has been the focus of many news outlets, over recent years, looking to maximise personal coverage and exploit multimedia platforms for their own advantage, in turn ensuring longevity for their titles.

Other news organisations have also introduced other ways of improving web user experience and building on the services that they offer, mainly as a way of adding commercial value, in an effort to break free from old-fashioned perceptions of the role of newspapers and news agencies, in general.


Sources: FT.com , Newssift.com , Techcrunch.com , Guardian.co.uk ,Journalism.co.uk , Cnet.com