The supply of vertical search solutions tailored to particular business niches remains a lucrative and important area, even in these days of Google’s apparently unstoppable growth in generic search market share. Many of the products and companies involved are almost invisible to the general web user, either surfacing only inside the firewalls of large enterprise customers or styled to appear a seamless part of the navigation experience on an e-Commerce site.

FT Search, part of Pearson’s Financial Times Group, recently released the public beta of an interesting new search engine aimed squarely at anyone — “even a CEO” (!) — interested in unearthing information on companies and the external factors affecting them.

Newssift.com brings data from diverse sources together with technology components from established players such as Endeca, Nstein, Lexalytics and ReelTwo to offer an interesting and potentially powerful navigational experience.

I spoke with Robin Johnson, CEO of FT Search, yesterday to hear more about newssift’s capabilities and their intentions for its future development.

Production of this podcast was supported by Talis, and show notes are available on their Nodalities blog.

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