Fast - New Update ?

[keywordbuys]

Hi,

Fast just updated today and my pages were added. So now I have 40 in total, looks to be like I was penalized or they just switched up their algo...or both.

Anyone else had similar results?

Thanks.

[keywordbuys]

Maybe I should clarify...I lost EVERY ranking I had!

[heini]

Hi keywordbuys and welcome to wmw!

So you have pages indexed for the first time? Did you use the free submission?

[keywordbuys]

20 more pages which are new to the index,on top of the 20 previous that held decent rankings.

Free submission only. Not sure if the new PFI has anything to do with losing ranking.

[heini]

>Lost rankings
Meaning you are nowhere on the serps, or just not on first or second page?

I didn't see any real changes in the algo lately. Fast did anyhow start going for what they feel is Spam. Which does of course not imply you're pages are to be considered Spam, but as is the case with Google, when SEs try to go for spam, many innocent sites get hit.

You should perhaps wait one more day to see if your page resurface. Fast also has had some temporary glitches lately, when for example all .co.uk sites had vanished.

[keywordbuys]

yeah that's what I mean.

I could understand how some of my pages may seem like "spam" to them, but they really aren't. I've heard how Google is going after overly optimized sites, I feel I've defined my keywords and optimized for them, and I know I didn't go overboard.

I didn't know about co.uk that's crazy, I'll go check that out.

I'll wait and see what's going on, thanks for the help.

[Robber]

This update has seen about 25% of my pages removed from Fast.

I'm not sure when the PFI started but there seems to be a fairly close correlation between that, losing rankings and losing number of pages in the index.

I guess loss of rankings could simply be related to loss of pages due to some weaker theming factor.

Anyone got any ideas what specific factors FAST might look at when pruning the databse a bit? Perhaps update frequency, similarity of content, lack of inbound links or growth of inbound links, too high KW density. Any sound evidence - this ones a mystery to me.

[backus]

not seen any change

[heini]

Fast Spam policy [alltheweb.com]:

exclude Page Spam documents from our index or at least disregard links from
it when computing static rank;

exclude borderline Page Spam when sufficiently large collections are found,
or at least disregard links from it;

disregard Search Term Stuffing when building the index and computing static
rank, and to reduce the static rank of the documents containing it; and

disregard Link Stuffing when building the index and computing static rank, and
to reduce the static rank of the documents containing it.

[makemetop]

Big change that I can see. SERP I checked which had multiple spammy listings across multiple domains and sub-domains from a single SEO has now been completely cleaned up. Someone lost a LOT of pages. This is very recent - spammy listings were there on Friday!

[Robber]

The FAST spam policy seems quite standard, unfortunately it doesnt really give me any answers. One thing I have been investigating, but don't have good evidence for is that pages more than a couple of levels downs (in terms of directory structure) have taken a hit in terms of both ranking (eg top 3 to third page) and possibly getting excluded.

Like I say, no firm evidence since it is not something I've really looked at until now, but this does seem to be quite consistent with my situation.

[Rumbas]

I've noticed some weeding out of pages to. Actually the SERPs look a bit more clean now.
Some kind of update has happend lately.

[chiyo]

interesting.

for our main site, we lost so many rankings on the main SERPS -

But wait! Suddenly our site features in those "categories" featured up the top - sometimes more than once in the dozen or so depending upon the query. In fact these categorys titled are actually very close to the title of our site, in several SERPS exactly the name of our site.

Personally we would prefer to be the main listings, Im not sure how many will click on those "categories".

Very rough guess is we are seeing theming used to a major extent, (more so than any other search engine so far). To some extent having a strong specific theme puts you in a "special category" and reduces your exposure in the main SERP for that term and possibly rankings in less-well related search terms to your "theme".

Interesting indeed.. not sure whether others are seeing this.

[keywordbuys]

See that's what I don't understand. If they feel that I violated SPAM policies (if that's even the case) then why wouldn't they drop the pages in question?

My rankings have dropped completely, however all of the pages remain.

I look forward to the next update, I've made some changes and will post the results if any.

[heini]

Chiyo, those "categories" are done on the fly, with existing odp cats coming first, followed by pseudo cats generated by titles and descriptions of sites linked together.
Clustering and topic relations are two hot concepts with Fast, though my impression is the latter still needs much refining.

[wharsono]

Oh Great ... One of MySite COMPLETELY Lost

[Robert Charlton]

A group of my sites lost position. I noticed a little orange box to the right that says:

About Your Query
Your query was rewritten into:
"keyword1 keyword2" keyword3
We did this by adding quotes to common phrases.

When I click "Repeat without rewrite," also in the box, the rankings returned to what I remembered before the update.

The puzzling thing about this is that keyword1 keyword2 are in fact used as a phrase everywhere on the sites, so I don't see how grouping these words as a phrase would change the results. For me it is an algo change, but I'm not exactly sure why it's doing what it's doing.

[Marcia]

Definitely updated, new site from end of November is now in for the very first time.

[Ove]

Yes maybe an update but there is no major diffrent in the serp yet.

/Ove

[keywordbuys]

I've noticed that since the latest update, some (I'm not saying all) of the queries I type in show results without any relevant keywords in the title, or description.

Wondering if FAST is switching to a link pop, low KW density algo.

[brotherhood of LAN]

I use the marketleap tool to check out my link pop and see if google is updating.

Ive seen FAST/Alltheweb show 3 different numbers for my link pop with them. Originall it was something like 220, similar to that of Google.

Lately, I had dropped, and continued to drop to about 60. It seems any hint of a dynamic page has dissapeared.

Im going to keep an eye on it thats for sure. However, as much as I rank OK for this particular SE, it hardly sends me any referrals anyway

[Marcia]

Robber, there are some old posts that seem to indicate that what you seem to be seeing may have some validity as far as directory depth is concerned:

[webmasterworld.com...]

[Liane]

I noticed yesterday that my index page was missing from the database. I resubmitted yesterday afternoon and it is already back in its #1 spot!!! That was F*A*S*T* :)