Searching FAST / Search Engine Evaluation

The sub-project, headed by Reto Ambühler (IT Services) has decided in favour of FAST, a Microsoft product.

The group was charged with evaluating a search engine which would function on both the public («ETH-Extranet») and the internal («ETH-Intranet») pages of the ETH website. Besides facilitating information retrieval, the search engine should also fit in with the new post-relaunch look of our website.

As part of the sub-project «search engine evaluation», three products, Funnelback, Google Search Appliance (GSA), and Microsoft FAST Search were compared. Product evaluation was based on product description, presentations, and practical tests in order to determine which one met all ETH requirements best. Although all 3 products largely met our technical requirements, there was however a large discrepancy in price. The latter is due to varying licensing policies which also makes direct comparisons relatively difficult.

Project members

  • Reto Ambühler (ITS, sub-project head)
  • Peter Bircher (ITS, head of Hosting group)
  • Bengt Giger (ITS, WCMS-operator, head sub-project WCMS evaluation)
  • Germano Giuliani (ETH Library)
  • Elmar Heeb (ISG Department of Physics)
  • Jacques Laville (Institute of Microbiology)
  • Benno Luthiger (ITS, head sub-project data sources)
  • Cristian Tuduce (ITS, coordinator sub-projects with ITS involvement)
  • Antje Wollschläger (HK, deputy project head WebRelaunch)

ETH Corporate Communications, together with the IT Services and project participants from all ETH sectors, is currently working on redesigning the ETH website.

Posted on
in News English Tags: , ,

Leave a Reply

Deine E-Mail-Adresse wird nicht veröffentlicht. Erforderliche Felder sind mit * markiert

Diese Website verwendet Akismet, um Spam zu reduzieren. Erfahre mehr darüber, wie deine Kommentardaten verarbeitet werden.