Fast to provide SEO services in Scandinavia and elsewhere

Paid inclusion with a new twist.

[rencke]

Excerpts from a Fast press release [fastsearch.com] dated June 6:

OSLO, Norway, 6 June 2001 Fast Search & Transfer (FAST), today unveiled its plans for FAST PartnerSite™, the first service that integrates hosted site search with guaranteed Web search inclusion. The service, which FAST will begin providing in Q3 of this year, was created to increase web site visibility in light of the search-related technology and marketing challenges businesses are experiencing as a result of the explosive growth of pages on the Internet.

My first reaction: Fast is the leading search engine in the Nordic area and through Terra Lycos/Spray also a major player elsewhere in Europe, so this is big news indeed. But no indications at all about the price level.

1. "Hosted site search application " Sounds like Google's cache to me. Cant figure out what the benefit might be, though.
2. "Guaranteed inclusion". Never heard of anyone having problems getting into Fast, so I am not sure of the value in this either.
3. "Guaranteed site re-indexing". Daily re-indexing is clearly valuable. A tweak a day and anyone should be able to figure out Fast's algo in a week or two. (Or perhaps the partners make it to the top anyway?)
4. "Customized page results". Sounds like they will be recognizing some sort of new meta tags to control SERP presentation. That could be nice.
5. "Point-and-click crawling". Sounds like guaranteed deep crawling. I thought Fast usually does this anyway though.
6. "Search results information". It doesn't say if the stuff you get is better than what a good log analyzer provides, but presumably it is and so of great value.

Any other ideas?

[Rumbas]

Great news.

I agree with you concerning FAST's ability and eager to deeb crawl. They have always been very good at this and I've never had any difficulties getting it to full index sites.

The controling feature (meta tag?) sounds interesting and of course the rapid daily indexing is a great plus. Especially for us living and doing business in Scandinavia where FAST is big.

The "Search results information" sounds like a plus too. Could take a bit of the hazzle of digging through logs for their crawler.

All in all an exciting new approach from FAST - will it make them even more know? (I guess they will at least be more interesting for SEO's).

[heini]

>A tweak a day and anyone should be able to figure out Fast's algo in a week or two. (Or perhaps the partners make it to the top anyway?)
Thatīs the interesting point about it. This is where it might come near to paid ranking.
A site search is a good service: Fast technology is, well, fast. Google offers a similar service, donīt they?
Daily reindexing is cool, stats are okay too. Sounds like a good offer, if the price is right.
BUT: If Fast Partnership influences ranking, this will corrupt Fastīs reputation.
Fast as well as Google are rising to the top right now precisely because they provide users and partners with the best results available on the net.
It is quite understandable that Fast is trying to make some money with their superior technology, and this sounds like a reasonable way. But I can only hope they do not think about diluting SERPS with paid results.
Alltheweb as their showcase would suffer a severe loss of credibility. And what about Fast partners as Lycos: Would they be happy with a db polluted with paid results? Fast would have made the profit, Lycos would have to pay for corrupted results.
Naah, I canīt imagine Fast partners would "make it to the top anyway". Partners with good SEO people will have a perfect setting for optimization though.

[littleman]

This is not at all good news. Think back to last year, and what happened to inktomi. In order to make their pay-for-crawling a value they had to practically destroy their regular db. Look at what it has done to inktomi. It is now the joke of the internet, and is loosing market share daily.

So now Fast does a copycat. It is a dark day.