The rebirth of Fireball

[heini]

Yes - it's true: Fireball lives.
After all the confusion with contradictory signals from owner Lycos starting today Fireball has come out with a completely overhauled site and a new ranking.

What is immeadiately noticeable: clustering. Fireball was famous for returning dozens of listings from one site in serps. Much needed improvement.

Linkpop? Was announced all the time - just how they put it in the algo I can not tell right now. Advanced search options apparently are not yet fully functional. Some serps look good, some rather absurd.

International, i.e. all non german speaking sites are still delivered by Altavista tech.

Klaus, oLeon, german members: What's the verdict on new Fireball?

[Rumbas]

Great news.

I took it for a short spin and the SERPs look a bit more clean, eventhough a few spammy ones floated around in the top. It is especially nice not to see dusins of listings from the same domain.

There's some indication of linkpop, how much and how I can't figure right now.

What about the newssearch - is that new?

[bird]

I'm not doing much online in german language, so I hardly ever used them. The previously truly messy search results were not exactly an incentive to change that either.

On first sight, the changes look extremely positive. They even offer a Fireball-Toolbar, is that new as well?

[srmpf]

The Toolbar is nothing new in Fireball - it was already there with the older version of the search

[heini]

Hello srmpf - welcome to wmw!

right, newssearch and toolbar both have been on the old Fireball as well. How do you like the algo?

[LeClair]

But it seems they are using an old index or they really cleaned it up. 80% of my sites are gone. Some of the still excisting ones are older ones than a week ago. A lot of Top 10 listings habe auto popups and stuff like that.

..and search for an adult term: no spam

[srmpf]

@heini: compared to the old fireball search, the new one is a major step forward

[oLeon]

after a few days I īd like to say: Fireball, you are still alive!

last couple of months I thought FBīd disappear due to its awfully listings (the best results you got if your page has been updated every three days including resubmit, and if your site has the searchterm in the domain like www.searchterm.de or searchterm.domain.de)
Thatīs well the reason why we in Germany talk about Fireball as "spammers paradise".

Well, time goes by...
The serps are really good, not the same results as everywhere (on Google or FAST), so a real option to search with. Not that much spam as before, even when some same doings work as well.

Would like to say, it could be that Lycos-Europe -owner from Fireball- may include the results from Fireball in its own listings, could be less expensiv than the FAST-listings.

[heini]

>Lycos-Europe -owner from Fireball- may include the results from Fireball in its own listings, could be less expensiv than the FAST-listings.

What I could imagine is Fireball replacing the german search at Lycos.de, with FAST to deliver international results. It's the model other European FAST partners employ, like the Tiscali group.

But then - why not unleash Fireball and let it index worldwide? Lycos sure needs to reduce costs urgently....

[heini]

Checking logfiles for a site I found a surprising number: the referrals from fireball are coming mostly from the new site preview function!
For every direct referral I get 4 referrals from people having used the preview.

Is it just the superb look of my site ;) or does it meet the general trend?