How to improve ranking in FAST?

High ranking in Google, low ranking in FastAlltheWeb

[jgar]

I have for a long time focused my attention on getting a good ranking in Google. While our Google ranking is good, our FastAlltheweb ranking is very poor - I see our pages are listed, but our results are as good as "unfindable" on target keywords.

What is the reason for this?

Does FastAlltheweb attach more importance to Meta tags (decription, keywords)?
Does paid inclusion significantly improve ranking?

I would be very interested to hear any views

Jgar

[chris_f]

The problem for most people's ranking in FAST/ATW comes down to PFI and Trusted Feeds. If you aren't using them / paying for them then you mean nothing to fast and you rank low.

Chris.

[jgar]

Thanks for the reply. I guess what you're saying is, you either pay for a good position, or your out of the running.
Correct?

[heini]

>If you aren't using them / paying for them then you mean nothing to fast and you rank low.

A simple calculation:

+2 Bill pages index.
-0,001% (probably much less) paid pages.

How many top positions can be occupied by paid pages?

Fact of the matter is, Fast doesn't give any boost to paid pages at all. That's what some folks have been complaining about... what, I pay for inclusion and I don't get a boost..?

[Liane]

I agree with Heini,

I have not paid to be included in Fast/Alltheweb, and I have 4 sites all ranking well in Google and Fast.

The only (big) difference I have noticed between Fast and Google is that the keywords must be in the title to rank well on Fast. This isn't necessarily true of Google ... although it does help a lot.

Of the four sites I mentioned, only one has ever been PFI on any engines (LookSmart and Yahoo). The others are all enjoying a free ride.

If it is the site in your profile, I would beef up the keywords. The vast majority represent less than 1 percent of your overall word count.

[steveb]

"That's what some folks have been complaining about... what, I pay for inclusion and I don't get a boost..? "

No that isn't at all what people are complaining about.

They are stating they lost ranking immediately after paying.

[Rumbas]

I know Fast is looking into the stated problems with pfi.
The paid pages are subject to the same algo as all the non-paid pages and the frequent spidering can cause a heavy ranking shift if you change those pages a lot.

Paying has NOTHING to do with ranking and, again, I highly doubt that Fast would penalize paid pages.

Why should they?

[heini]

Compared to Google with Fast on page criteria are very important.
Solely relying on some heavy weight links as possible with Google is not any guarantee in Fast.
With Fast I always start with a good oldfashioned solid onpage optimization, description, titles, headers etc.
That's not to say links are negligible. The more the merrier :)
Going from that basis experimenting with density, proximity, would be start. PFI can be very helpful as you see results pretty quickly.

[nervous_seo]

Get a listing in Dmoz and your rankings will boost.

Problem is getting into DMOZ!

Dmoz is a joke - so corrupt

SE's shouldnt give dmoz the time!

[markd]

Just reinforce Heini's observations, I have found that Fast seems to put a lot of emphasis on the first few words in the 'body' of the HTML page, even ignoring 'H1 heading' text in favour of the body.

I think there is a big difference between paying for frequent spidering (as per many PFI's) and paying for rank (as per most PFC).

The reason why any PFI program may drop non-paid pages from a site with a few paid for pages is to encourage you to pay for even more pages as you see you 'free' pages disappearing.

This is certainly my main concern with Fast and AV's PFI program.

[heini]

nervous, ODP is an important factor with Fast, but you can do quite well without. In fact I saw the importance diminuishing over the last updates.

[edited by: heini at 10:38 am (utc) on Oct. 30, 2002]

[Rumbas]

On page stuff still is very important. Title, body, headings, bold and link-text combined with a good clean page, should take you a good way.

BUT, don't go overboard with density. Don't stuff your pages with lots and lots of repetition of the keyword(s).

Heini also mentions this elsewhere; linkpop is not as important to Fast as it is to Google. You can't rank high on just a few high PR-like pages in Fast as you can in Google.

BTW, I just checked 3 domains and they all have both paid and non-paid pages in the db. Over time I haven't be able to see any difference in rankings between those. In fact Lycos comes in in the top 10 of most referring sites, but it's also ranking very good on a number of popular keywords. It's a B2C site selling comsumer oriented products. The traffic is there, you just have to work a little hard to get it.

[starec]

The difference in ranking may also be caused by different spam filtering. Sometimes I find myself pushed down a couple of pages down in Fast by some "Pro" using multiple subdomains with duplicate content.

aaa.widgets.org
bbb.widgets.org
ccc.widgets.org
...

This currently works great with fast...

[Tor]

This currently works great with fast...

Yes it does... and it annoys me a lot! :(

[Tony_Perry]

I have a similar problem with MSN.com We have a client in a very competitive area (Life Insurance!)and when we optimise a page for Google it ranks very well (P2) but slips way down on MSN. Try optimising for MSN and it does very well there (P1) but as good as disapears from Google!

On the site it isnt possible to produce another home page as it would appear as a "mirror" page and get it banned totaly!

All the site traffic comes from MSN and Google so I need to sort it out preety damn quick. I might produce a totaly new site using the same database and submit one to either search engine with some coding to avoid the other engine from spidering it.

Always gald to hear what you guys think.

[annej]

I have 2 simular sites, one old and one relatively new (a year or so old). Both rank high in Google but in alltheweb only the old one ranks high and I don't know if the new one is non existant or just so far down I never foundn it.

I'm wondering if newer sites are getting less consideration in hopes people will pay for a boost.

Anne

[heini]

Can't confirm that, annej. I've had new sites getting in and coming up in a 2-3 Months time frame.
Having two similar sites where one ranks well and the other dosn't looks like good material to study.
Of course first it must be made sure the bad ranking site is fully indexed and has as solid linkpop as the good ranking site.

[annej]

I checked and my newer site isn't even in there. I guess they don't go looking for sites because several sites that have linked to my newer site are in there. The links must never have been followed. I did submit the site on the free submit version.

I also looked at my stats in my older site and even though I am up on the top in my prime search words on both alltheweb and google I only get 1 visitor from alltheweb to 350 visitors from Google. Makes alltheweb pretty minor in terms of bringing in visitors.

Anne