The news of FAST being acquired by Microsoft comes as no real surprise. There has been speculation for a couple of years. The search engine company, after a growth tear, stumbled financially last year, and has been operating as a trimmed down company for most of 2007. A 40% price premium had to be too hard for FAST shareholders to turn down.

I’ve had the pleasure of working with FAST as a business partner for ~3 years. It’s a quality company, with a search engine technology and talent pool that is truly world class. The past year has seen the loss of some great talent from the company, but they remain with a strong foundation, and an impressive enterprise and publishing client base.

How should a FAST local media client look at this?

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search, mobile search, publishing | 1 Comment »

If you follow my blog, you’ve probably seen discussion of the concept of the “third page of search“. It’s a term to illustrate the area to which local media needs to pay particular attention. The entry search box = first page, Search Engine Result Page = second page, and third page is where the SERP click takes you.

Recently, a couple of notable bloggers have begun referring to the “second click”, very much a connected concept.

Tadoca founder & AOL Ad Executive, Dave Morgan, authored “The Fight for the Second Click“.

John Battelle profiles this concept in discussing Google’s KNOL announcement, aiming to assimilate the enormous click volume currently enjoyed by Wikipedia.

Summarizing the driving motive, Dave Morgan describes Google’s appetite for click traffic:

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search, third page, strategy | 1 Comment »