T-online to team up with Fast

replacing Infoseek, starting November

[heini]

Okay, so in Germany Fast is getting massive!

T-online declared today [aktie.t-online.de] Fast Technology would provide the possibility to search for audio, video, ftp formats. Also the implementation of targeted ads was announced.
Sounds like they are going the Lycos route.

Whoaa, much going on in Germany!

[Rumbas]

This is MAJOR news! :)

All speculation of Google or Inktomi taking over from Infoseek has been viped of the table with this.

So, now we have Lycos.de and T-online.de using FAST data in Germany, who else?

[Macguru]

Thanks for the gem heini! Since my German is pretty poor, can you give us an idea of Infoseek's market share in Germany?

Thanks

[heini]

IS was on T-Online, that said they were potentially very big. Problem was, IS suffered from structural problems for almost a year. Lately they renewed the whole thing and it worked pretty good.
T-online is the #1 site in Germany. A SE on this site clearly has the potetial to be #1 of german engines in terms of searches performed and ad revenues earned.
Itīs huge.

[heini]

The press release reveals also a restructuring of t-online homepage is due. The searchfunction will be integrated on t-online homepage. Serps will be presented inside a t-online environment. With IS serps were opened in a frame.
The reason for this change is stated as follows:
T-online presents along with the searchfunction advertisments directly related to the query
Incorporated in the search results will be results from t-online portals as well as from business pages hosted by t-online.
This all goes for T-online handling ads themselfes, no room for possible Goto partnerships.

Fast already powers Ya.com, T-online.ch and -.at are to follow, as well as Club Internet in France.

MacGuru: around 7 Million unique visitors/month, and growing.

[Brett_Tabke]

Fast put thier press release [fast.no] online yesterday too:

[caine]

very interesting, but will individuals in other countries using fast, convert to english in using the web to maximise quality and accuracy of search results ?

[heini]

Caine, Fast provides results from their db. Language on SERPs and elsewhere is of course German. You can see how it works on Lycos.de [lycos.de].
T-online announced a tight integration of Serps with T-online content: query targeted advertisement is the goal here.

[heini]

T-online has tightened itīs relationship with Springer. The german media major was one of the owners of Infoseek and handled the marketing of the infoseek site.
Now T-online took over a 50% share of Springers Marketing divison Interactive Media. The mission will be to handle advertisement and content marketing on both companies sites.

So thatīs it for overture. My guess is t-onlineīs websearch will have a self-developed model for paid results.

[ulstrup]

Looks like FAST is taking over Germany.

Some time ago FAST did take over Denmark, they lost the battle to Google and my guess is that they will loose the battle in Germany too, unless they improve their search results.

[heini]

>FAST is taking over Germany

Hey, there is still abadoor, and acoon, and uhmm whatīs their name yeah: abacho! No really, AOL and MSN are left.
And we still have Fireball. They just announced changes to using linkpop, but Fireball belongs to the Lycos/Bertelsmann group. Wouldnīt be surprised at all when Fireball suddenly would be powered by Fast.
AV? Cleaning the house, doing basically everything to upset searchers and website owners alike.
Google is definitly on the rise, small wonder.

[heini]

- ? -

Infoseek closing down in a few hours - no sign whatsoever of a new searchfunction on t-online.
Anybody seen anything yet?

[heini]

Hey, does T-online read here too? ;)
Fast results, apparently unfiltered, i.e. as in alltheweb, are now displayed in a preliminary raw design. No prechecked options for worldwide, german TLD or german language - meaning first worldwide db is displayed.
Of course this wonīt last long. T-online and Springer made it quite clear that websearch will be fully integrated in content and adds on the frontpage.

I wonder what will happen to the just overhauled IS technology and all the people having worked on it - perhaps weīll see a resurrection someplace else...

[heini]

Update on T-online: a major overhaul of all portal pages has been effected in the last two hours. 4 columns, designed for 1024x768, seamless integration of content and ads. One of the problems for t-online was the short time of stay on their portal compared to web.de or aol.de. Consequently they strengthened and broadened content, including multimedia elements.
Websearch anyhow is not integrated at all: a very small searchbox on the upper right - not overly prominent. Results pages are still pretty naked - with no signs of paid results. Nevertheless I donīt suppose this is the last word on functionalizing websearch on t-online.

[oLeon]

We got about 20% more clicks out of FAST with T-online now in Germany...
Great!

I assume T-Online try to integrate either the directory or paid results at least at the beginning next year.

[heini]

This is what a referrer from t-online/Fast looks like:
http*//brisbane.t-online.de/fast-cgi/tsc?q=XYXYXY&start=0&num=10&conext=www&type=all&PortalLanguage=de

oLeon, did you notice the difference in referrers between plain websearch (as above) and the search with "Themen+A-Z&s2=Dienste+A-Z&s3=Exklusiv+A-Z&q=XYXYXY"?
Donīt quite get it - results are the same.