FAST Unveils New Specialized Search Options to AlltheWeb

Fast Search & Transfer (FAST), a leading developer of real-time search and filter technologies, announced several new advanced searching features on its popular search site, AlltheWeb.com. These new features demonstrate FAST's continued commitment to offering its users the freshest, fastest and most relevant search results in the world.

New advanced features demonstrate FAST's continued commitment to offering users the best possible search experience

OSLO, Norway - 2 October 2002 - Fast Search & Transfer (FAST), a leading developer of real-time search and filter technologies, today announced the availability of several new advanced features on AlltheWeb.com (www.alltheweb.com), FAST's search technology showcase and one of the largest and most comprehensive search engines in the world. These new features, available on AlltheWeb's Advanced Search page (www.alltheweb.com/advanced) include:

Regional Filtering -- Users can restrict their search results to include documents specifically from particular regions of the world, enabling them to solve language issues when performing searches. Geographical regions supported in this feature currently include Africa, Asia, Canada (.ca and country specific .com), Central America, Europe, Middle East, North America (.com, .net, .org, .gov, .edu, .mil), Oceania, South America and Southeast Asia.

Document Depth Filtering -- Enables users to specify the level of depth their search is performed within a given web server. For example, if a user is searching for information that they believe would be found on a home page, they would search on the top level. However, if they are searching for more detailed information, they can choose to search pages deeper within the sites that pertain to their search query.

Embedded Content Search -- Provides for highly specialized searches for information containing embedded content such as images, audio, video, VBScript, RealMedia, JavaScript code, Java applets, as well as Macromedia Flash animations and Flash content. For example, users can perform searches specifically for pages or URLs containing Macromedia Flash files.

Personal Homepage Search -- Users can specifically retrieve personal homepages in their search results. For example, if users wish to find information only from fan sites of the San Francisco 49ers, they can click on this advanced feature and use "San Francisco 49ers" as their query.

As a supplement to these newly added advanced features, FAST is also improving the visual relevancy of AlltheWeb's search results. Now, users will be able to preview the context in which their search term appears within the page Already made available to FAST portal customers such as Lycos, AlltheWeb's visual relevancy helps users quickly find the context of their search query within the results presented to them by highlighting these terms.

"At FAST, we constantly strive to provide our users with the best possible search tools for finding the most difficult information in a wide variety of formats," said John M. Lervik, Ph.D., FAST's chief executive officer. "These new, advanced features give AlltheWeb users a heightened ability to refine and customize their searches, so that they can further obtain the highly specialized results for which they are looking. By offering our users the fastest, freshest and most relevant search results in real-time, from a wide variety of sources, its no surprise that AlltheWeb has increasingly grown in popularity with hard core searchers."

AlltheWeb delivers search results from the over 2.1 billion Web pages and integrates them with award-winning breaking news results from thousands of news sources and hundreds of millions of image, video, MP3, and software files, all within a single search result page. With advanced linguistics, categorization techniques, and support for 49 languages, AlltheWeb combines a comprehensive, fresh, and fully integrated search resource with one of the largest news resources on the Internet.

About FAST
Fast Search & Transfer (FAST) creates the real-time search and filter technology solutions that are behind the scenes at some of the world's best known companies with the most demanding search problems. FAST's flexible and scalable integrated technology platform spans both Internet and enterprise customers, and elevates search to unprecedented levels. FAST closes the gap between information and action, connecting people to the relevant information they seek regardless of medium, in turn driving revenue and reducing total cost of ownership by effectively leveraging IT infrastructure for our clients and world-class partners. FAST search technology is currently deployed by a wide range of global customers and partners including AT&T, BroadVision, CareerBuilder, Chordiant, Dell, Freeserve, IBM, InfoSpace, Reed Elsevier (Scirus.com), Reuters, T-Online, Terra Lycos, and Tiscali.

FAST has operations in the United States, Europe (Norway, Germany, UK), and Japan, and is publicly traded under the ticker symbol 'FAST' on the Oslo Stock Exchange. Please visit www.fastsearch.com for more information or see FAST in action at our technology showcase www.alltheweb.com.

© 2002 Fast Search & Transfer ASA - Fast Search & Transfer, FAST, and the FAST four-colored logo are trademarks of Fast Search & Transfer ASA. All rights reserved. FAST disclaims any proprietary interest in the marks and names of others. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.

###