Major Update at Fast!

All sites in!

[esset2002]

Great news! All sites that hasnīt been in for the last 4 months are now in! They are not in the serps yet, I used advanced feature and look at IP number. This is the biggest update in over 4 months (at least for me)

:-) and I was first spotting the last big one too...

ESSET

[Napoleon]

Until they are in the SERPS I don't really consider it an update. I don't doubt that they have crawled all the new sites, but bear in mind that FAST is a pay for inclusion device. As such, they choose if and when they return the crawled sites (based to some degree on whether you pay). When they do so, it is an update - until that point, they are still hopelessly out of date. Just my 25 pence worth.

Excellent spot there though Esset... I wonder if you will score your hat-trick in another 4 months (or whenever)?

[lazerzubb]

Yes it looks like they have done a big one.
I think someone posted that it was to be released this date to.

[esset2002]

Just wait a day or to they will be in!

[angiolo]

Great!

A site submitted in the middle of July was crawled about three weeks ago and it is now in.

[heini]

Yup - got new pages in.
Also the serps look pretty good - that bug from the last weeks apparently really is fixed.

[Rumbas]

Nice. Finally an update that looks really good - at least from my perspective ;)

What's your take?
Any major corrections/updates to the algo?

[Jill]

Are the new results showing yet? We have a site that comes in with the main page at #2 for our kw search but more than 2/3 of the site are not listed as in the database. I can't figure out for the life of me why they don't include these pages.

[mayor]

>>FAST is a pay for inclusion device

I've tried their Lycos PFI program and got dismal results. I doubt they are making much money on it and failing to update their general index is probably causing them a lot of harm.

As one can surmise from the Inktomi PFI program, if you've got a lot of traffic the PFI program can increase short term revenues at the risk of a long term disaster.

I have one small site that just showed up in the Fast index after waiting about six months, not that it matters much because of the very small amount of traffic I expect from Fast/Alltheweb/Lycos. Some other new sites are still waiting.

[Brad]

>>Are the new results showing yet?

Yes. And they are on Lycos too. I was shocked. My main site had totally disappeared from FAST for 4 - 6 months. I had given up. So this morning I was stunned to see some hits from Lycos of all places. Good placement too.

This was a very pleasant surprise. Made my month. :)

[ultragenius]

wow.. did a search on ( [searchphrase]) and got 5 pages - no joke! - of a certain site and not my domain which has those sort of keywords in it :)

Got to love updates.

[edited by: heini at 11:06 pm (utc) on Sep. 20, 2002]
[edit reason] no specific searchphrases please / see sticky mail [/edit]

[martinibuster]

not that it matters much

I think the reason that FAST matters, at least for me, is that they may one day land a major account in the United States. I'm speaking primarily about Yahoo.

If that happens, I wouldn't want to be scrambling to catch up to my competitors, who may already be in it.

[jamsy]

Still no referrers from FAST, must be doing something wrong - however I have many clients on the first pages :(

Maybe on my stats FAST's referrer id is "google" and they are blurring in to one referrer string ;)

[steveb]

Does anybody get anyone from FAST?

It's random results are bad enough but even though I get a #1 listing on terms that would be good for 40 clicks a day from Google, I get a couple a month from FAST. I wouldn't pay any attention to them except these scary rumors keep surfacing that they may partner with somebody who does matter.

[brotherhood of LAN]

Does anybody get anyone from FAST?

Not really, had 3 this month.....and I rank OK for something that pulls 8 million results.

You'll most likely get referrers from providers who use FAST results like Lycos I believe...........

/added
when you say FAST do you mean ATW?

[heini]

Fast won't show on logs except for the spiders.
ATW (Alltheweb) will eventually show in referrals, but since ATW is a R&D sandbox and not a promoted search engine, only very few people use it.

Traffic from listings in FAST comes from their portal partners and is more a factor in Europe.
You might take a look here to see where Fast's db is in use:
[webmasterworld.com...]

For a more graphical impression of Fast's importance see here
[webmasterworld.com...]

[steveb]

I meant all the web.

[heini]

ATW: just a R&D sandbox, Steve, also a showcase for potential customers from the portal industry as well as coporate search solutions. Not promoted at all.
No wonder you don't get traffic from ATW, nobody does in any remarkable quantity.

[bobmark]

That's really interesting Heini (Fast won't show on logs except for the spiders.) I have Lycos/ATW site select and have always thought it was a total waste as I get virtually no traffic from it. My site does well in Inktomi, Google etc so I assume it is nothing weird in my pages.

[heini]

Exactly, Bobmark - traffic from inclusion to Fast should come from their partners, like the various Lycos properties and many many others.
Of course the total trafic from this is not comparable to Google traffic in quantity, but what is comparable to Google?
Operating in Europe Fast is a must, anyhow.

[bobmark]

thanks for replying heini. yes I had noticed once or twice searchers from se's I had not heard of from europe that, when I went to their pages it was fed by ATW. Now if I could only get something from altavista who seem to hate me, I would be happy!

[Brad]

A lot of good metasearch engines use FAST/AlltheWeb results so if you can get on the first page of the ATW SERP's that can generate some traffic.

While no one source will bring in huge amounts, if you start adding in all those metasearch hits plus Lycos it does start adding up.

This is a very good update.