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They rolled out a new database/algorithm. It has replicated over to the Lycos servers too.
edit> it's nice for 2 or 3 searched, but now i got a headacke i opted out.
Is the 'sidebar' thing on Lycos new? I like it, though I noticed a competitor site I track that uses a refresh on its home page has managed to 'break' the lycos sidebar frameset and reclaim the whole screen. I know it wasn't deliberate, but wonder will people start trying this for real?
Nearly blew me off my seat, the new colour scheme, and page layout, that is a very brave statement. Can confirm on the algo, things change, definetly looking at variables, differently than the Gbot.
>didn't expect that
Me neither, but we have been waiting for a larger update from FAST - eventhough they don't really do big updates on a monthly basis like GG. They do a little of the db all the time and once in a while they roll out a more in depth update.
There was one in April 2002 [webmasterworld.com] and I think that was the last major update. Am I right?
quite_man, the Lycos Side bar is not new. We spotted it [webmasterworld.com] back in January.
Same random results here. Instead of an interesting search page they ought to spend time on making the results at least moderately relevant.
They sure do, its not that hard to work out either.
Looks a good update to me, still some way to go but getting there.
A big database is not good if you use it poorly.
have you ever tried the fast advanced search, it may surprise you a little.
In regards of FAST's algo, its not that far behind G, different yes, but G ain't perfect either, not by a long shot
The days of natural language processing are still new, and even the Leobner award winners ain't capable of holding a conversation, even via terminals about any thing that could fool a compus-mentus human for longer than a couple of minutes.
Since G has evolved out of the school of excite, i think its days are numbered, as were excite's.
For some reason <wink> they seem to be crawling and *ranking* Yahoo directory sites quite well.
P.S. I've seen the fast crawler hit newly listed yahoo sites faster than the other bot.
Arouw? About natural language, just because we don't talk much about something doesn't mean that we don't work on it. ;)
But i think Fast has something to offer the searcher on the net, and i was trying to offer a little sanity to the 'all things google' position which both me and you know, is a very unrealistic position to view the world of SERPs from, though no doubt a preferred one for your company.
p.s. i meant stanford. in relation to your comment, not that G has followed the same code principles
If you want to "rank" well on consumer/commercial searches, you will probably have to use adwords, because the google algo is just too "weak" in this area.
Other engines are more suited to supply relevant results to the consumer/commercial searcher without using an advertising system.
FAST is getting very good at it.
If you like shoppers, you should head for the engine that satisfies their needs.
>Was not expecting that.
>Nearly blew me off my seat
You can say that again! Holly S**t! What a change!
This guys REALLY mean business. They have smell Google´s blood, and stteped in! Looks like if we do have a new championg/competitor. Great! F*****g Great!
Spread the word...
PD: Google´s Propaganda man posting here? he-he-he
Gotcha caine. I completely agree that different engines work better for different things, and every user should find what works best for them. I'm glad that FAST is here, because competition creates better search engines for everybody. I also liked FAST's halloween theme. :)
john316, agree completely with you on commercial searches and the fact that google's main algo is not "optimized" for them. Just checking now to see how Fast handles competitive searches.
Hey, is Halloween ;)
>competition creates better search engines for everybody.
That is the point.
caine, I vaguely remember Excite's hey-day, when a search for web design some_local_area brought back pages and pages in the 5 word search of every local real estate company you could think of, and then some. My early battle days with Excite were to move ahead of those real estate guys with a site that really did match the search. The day finally came, shortly before the demise of Excite. It was a short-lived hollow victory that left a bitter taste and no bragging rights, which were well earned. :(
If Google has any hopes at all of ever matching up to the spammed out irrelevancy of Excite as I remember it, they might as well give up the ghost now.
Please explain.
At present i can see no thematic origins in similar. From what I remember, Excite was almost 100% text based with reasonable duplicate filtering. Google is more rounded with a definite emphasis on link popularity.
Of course, and its irrelevant to the point. The question is the results served up to the casual, common, normal user. At this point Fast's results are very poor and I sure wish they were better since the world would be better off with at least three or four major, decent, useful search engines.
As long as a search on All the Web for "webmaster world" (no quotes) turns in results where this site only comes in at #18, and then even THAT result is just a random forum, not the main page(!)... well, as long as the results are that poor, FAST will be of little use to users.
They just can't find the links from the yahoo directory.
FAST is finding them and assigning appropriate ranking.
Good news for all the yahoo directory customers that took a recent beating and surfers who like to find bargains on the web!
Same company name, identical page content, slightly different domain names..... seems there may still be work to do on the spam traps.
A lot of people never buy things off the Net, and for those that do typically they aren't doing commercial searches. Thus, Google should want to optimize the algo for what the average user considers most important.
>If you want to "rank" well on consumer/commercial searches, you will probably have to use adwords, because the google algo is just too "weak" in this area.
Or, from Google's POV this is the algos greatest strength. This encourages businesses to buy Adwords. ;)
>They sure do, its not that hard to work out either.
Yep. I have, and am doing obscenely well for all they keywords I have targeted for on FAST. #1 on the 4 single keyword searches, and #2 on the one 2 word search phrase. It's a whole lot easier to SEO for FAST than Google. Which arguably is one of Google's strengths.
I ran a few tests and got some excellent results in terms of relevance to what I asked for. I was most impressed.... until I got the same hotel affiliate page 37 times, one after the other, starting at #1.
This is an interesting point. All Search Engines have struggled with the "hotel problem".
How do they spot affiliate sites? Few "genuine" links exist within the hotel business, in fact a hotel booking site with links is probably "suspect"
Google has played a lot with their algorithm vis a vis hotels, and of late have made strides in eliminating the "same hotel affiliate page 37 times". A search in Google for say, hotels in a specific US city or state have varied wildly this year, and there were times when one was getting the same spam multiple times.
Can you sticky me the search you did on Fast that gave you the 37 sites as SERPs. I have tried to duplicate it on looking up your profile and asumed you were searching by city, state or countrywide Australia, but could not get the run of 37.
The search is totally unrelated to hotels. See your stickymail.
