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This is from a UK perspective, are they as big in the other regions, Europe, Asia the US?
Our strategies had to meet their demands. Subsequent developments have proved this view correct.
In assessing Fast and where they are going, one has to look at how the Web is now sustaining only one key player to suit each search model. The engines and directories have to shape themselves to these market forces.
In the Google / Fast race for dominance, Google has carved its niche with Yahoo! and significant others. Fast is, with early signs of some nervousness, looking for a well-deserved home of its own.
In looking to the future, we sometimes ignore the fact that within a couple of years the North American market will form a user minority. Proof of this phenomenon’s early arrival is the vituperative backlash scuzzy programs like WPG are experiencing for promising European, Australasian, and Eastern coverage without delivery.
We also have to bear in mind that surviving SE strategists (those not of the dot bombs) intend being in business for the long term and their marketing fundis were definitely born a long time before yesterday. Fast's strategists appear to have responded to the future with foresight.
Until very recently, South African (yes, we’re still here) Web portals and ISPs offered search facilities that behaved as though they were smashed together by prepubescent programmers on high-octane drugs. Search was a mess. Now, they’ve been lifted to near respectability by their partnerships with decent international engines.
South Africa’s major portal, which has fought its way to the top through the good ol’ SA method of mixing thuggery and lousy customer service to form a winning formula, is M-Web. M-Web uses Fast and is reaping the rewards. Ananzi, which had all but disappeared from view, partnered Inktomi and reinvented itself as a useful Web tool. A relative unknown, Aardvark, got hold of Google and cannot but benefit from the partnership.
South Africa’s former undisputed heavyweight, iAfrica, sticks to the old formula of dazed-and-confused and produces error pages and offers searchers GoTo at the foot of their page. They’re on to a hiding to nothing.
The foresight of Fast's promoters appears to be paying off. Fast is looking (and competing with Google and others) for partnerships in a global market and this is perhaps where its revenue sources lie. Although I prefer to Google because my focus is the First World (North America in particular), most searchers want optimal local searches.
Fast, given its speed and a database Greg Notess’s admittedly outdated figures (Oct 9, 2000) puts ahead of Google, appears slightly better placed to take advantage of the trend towards retro-globalization (witness the growth of community sites, etc).
And remember that since Notess’s figures came out Fast has expanded through Lycos and its affiliations with ODP and DirectHit.
If Fast can leverage the best of what it’s got, i.e. speed and reach with the best of the rest, it should carve a niche for itself among the remaining top guns rather than having to head for the hills and perdition as AV appears to be doing (mind you, even old AV seems to have perked up of late).
Moreover, it's been interesting to watch the way Fast seems to be tracking Google's search algorithms (the latter seemingly on a mission to both clean up and optimize PageRank). Fast's march of increasing relevance continues down the partner line, e.g. Sprint, Sympatico, et al.
Are whispered meetings taking place in dark and smoky rooms? To paraphrase the words of a great man, "I get a feeling that something is happening here, but I don't know what it is... Do you?" :-)
Whatever, I agree – with Google, Fast is right up there.
PS: I write posts, don't send them, and they lie around. I've done a search on some of the terms in this one but can't find it. So here it is. If I've cross-posted, my apologies. I did, however, feel the content to be relevant.
That leaves Fast/AllTheWeb as the heiraparent to the probably to be vacated throne held by Inktomi. If Ink continues to falter, that would leave openings at Aol, Hotbot, Lycos, and MSN. That would represent somewhere around (my estimate since there are no honest figures available) 40% of the searches done on the internet in a day.
Then there is what I think is best termed as a growing Goto.com backlash. That is coming from both webmasters and the general surfing pulic who are starting to wake up to the fact their clicks have been sold. This has not breed confidence by researches or people looking for information. When all that comes up in someones results is the same old tired mega site with cash to burn, they will move on.
I think we are seeing that happen with Google. They have promoted to the top of the searches, the same old core set of mega sites for two years. If you were to take a list of 1000 top single keywords and plug them into Google for 100 results each, I would imagine 90 to 95% of the sites in those results would match two years ago. I've often felt Google was compose of nothing more than a search engine for the top 1000 sites at best.
When it comes to 1 or 2 word searches - content means absolutly nothing to Google. You can have the best site on the net for that keyword and if you don't have the mega links, it just doesn't matter - you are buried. In that sense, Google does like content rich small sites who can't muster the affiliate program, or agressive links program that the mega sites can do with a phone call.
Google does shine when it comes to 4-5 word phrases. Longer phrase searches is where the Alta's, Ink's, and even Fast have a very difficult time producing relevant results. So with Google, the newer users that often use one or two keyword searches are getting filtered to the mega sites to capture as long term users.
Fast on the other hand, is very good at relevant broad based quality results in the single and dual popular keywords where Google falls down. Where Fast does need help is in those tougher 3-5 word searches. They are getting much, much better.
With Euro net actively finally starting to catch up with the lead the states built, I think Fast has a bright future.
With regard to the above, Ralph Tegtmeier’s following statement (fantomNews 2/10) says to me Google is definitely up to something with PageRank. He says:
“While we were not able to verify this to date, we have also received reports that Google's link: function may display disparate results over several identical searches.
“The conclusion from the above is that checking link popularity on Google is currently quite unreliable.
“What's more important, however: this may explain the recently vented suspicion that Google has started hunting out link popularity programs and link farms, which has actually been confirmed by the company in later interviews.”
Here’s hoping Fast gets Google to do the dirty work before they screw up their results as well. If you feel Google to be over-rated, PageRank equates to a Microsoft release without Service Packs, i.e. it’s horribly flawed.
Brett, I agree wholeheartedly with your view that Inktomi is set to slink from the scene with its tail between its legs, creating a vacuum Fast will very quickly fill. This will open Search to competition for results provision and, given Google’s stultified results, Fast is likely to shift up through the gears to corner a larger slice of the mass-based consumer pie.
Fast’s growth, coupled to a backlash against GoTo and the myriad parasitic moneygrubbers in tow (“And I hope that you die / And your death’ll come soon”), will put the two big engines on a par - with everything to compete for. Of late, Danny Sullivan, Chris Sherman, and others have been highlighting the glut of paid links rendering most metas worthless.
One thing, though. Running through the whole positioning dynamic is shadow cast by the ‘bigger picture’. Andrew Goodman’s latest Traffick Monthly (http://www.traffick.com/story/2001-05/searchtechenterprise.asp) summarizes the situation beautifully. Implicit in his article is the notion that, while the venture capitalists (VC) and many others have been burned by the dotbomb, those organizations left standing are either thrusting into or are focusing on more profitable and traditional market sectors.
This is where, in the chase for the filthy lucre, the enterprise will always win out. The Web searcher will remain a guinea pig for experimentation and will either benefit from developing technologies or will, as has been the case for years now, be left in the lurch with outdated databases, meaningless search results, and trite public relations releases. It is a morass from which there is no escape. It is ‘how things are done’. It is our lot :-).
Unlike the dotcom-addicted jackals pursuing Pay for Display into the ground, the Smart Money (manipulated by those Masters of the Universe, the omnipotent VC) is focusing on custom portal solutions for the enterprise because, to put it bluntly, that’s where the money is.
So, to some extent, the seriousness with which search providers focus on search might be seen as inversely proportional to their commitment to corporate solutions.
To get back to Rencke’s point though, and the one I feel is driving Fast around the globe, Lycos founder Bob Davis, interviewed by SiliconValley.com, has this to say of the Internet in three to five years’ time.
“We will wake up and see AOL Time Warner as the dominant media company, the way they are today. For many, it's a function of competing with an Avis strategy, which is 'we try harder' and it's OK to be second in a large market. If there is any weak spot at AOL Time Warner, it's global markets. I don't want to in any way infer that they are in a poor position internationally. If you look in Latin America and Europe, there are opportunities to capture more of a foothold.”
Others might not feel AOL to be there yet, but it is in the emerging markets (Latin America, Europe, Asia, Autralsia and, to a degree, Africa) that I see Fast and, to a lesser degree, traditional Web-based companies like AV and Inktomi putting their money and effort for the foreseeable future. Either way, all will remain major Internet technology players of one kind or another.
We will get the scraps and inherit the earth :-).
Edited to correct typos.
*I think he meant 'imply'.
Mike
This interesting snippet ( [news.bbc.co.uk...] ) from the BBC (sourced from Dave Winer at [scripting.com...] ).
Andrew Goodman also gives some convincing arguments supporting the "inference" in his Traffick Weekly of June 2, 2001 and in Traffick Notes at [traffick.com...]
This material departs from the original thrust of this thread but, given what these guys are saying, Fast's lowly ranking as both a property and a search site gives us only half the story.
The implication is that its position is far stronger than that for which it's given credit :-).
