Byrne Tony Byrne

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Vivisimo and MSN Search win FirstGov Search contract

26-Sep-2005

Tags: Enterprise Search, Marketplace at Large, Selecting Technology, Vivisimo Velocity

A month ago, we chronicled how some public search engines were yielding more coverage of .gov sites than the mammoth official U.S. government search engine at FirstGov.gov. Well, in a contract re-bid, it looks like uncle sam has decided to switch rather than fight, awarding the service to a combined team of MSN Search along with niche vendor Vivisimo. MSN should provide reach; Vivisimo should provide results clustering and some federated search (over time federal sites are supposed to be exposing some specialized metadata). As Enterprise Search Report readers know, clustering of the type offered by Vivisimo can be very hit-and-miss, depending on the quality of the underlying results set. Nevertheless, the switch should offer improved results. The ertswhile loser in all this would be the incumbent provider, Fast Search & Transfer, but FAST is doing well in other segments and I suspect will absorb the blow just fine.

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