optimising for Fast

[Haakon]

Hello, I`m interested in optimising my web page for Fast since it is updated to frequently.
I`m building a theme based site (Fast supports themes, right?) where I have only one keyword on the main page and links to my other pages that are related. The site is only one level deep and my subpages has only got two keywords; the descriptive keyword for that page and my main keyword with both keywords fairly optimised for Fast; and then a link back to my main page.
Does anyone have any comments on how I do this?

I`m also wondering if I should make subdomains for each of the sub-keywords and place the pages there; will this help me or classify my page as spam?

My pages are also extremely simple with just metatags, title and header, content and a link (back to main page); Am I right about thinking this is better than advanced sites?

I`m also wondering how much the link popularity counts for Fast? How many links are "good popularity"?

Thanks for reading all of this :), hope you can help me.

Thanks
Haakon

[Brett_Tabke]

Welcom to the forums Haakon,

>supports themes

Well, yes in the sense they enjoy relevant content, but no they do not currently use an algo that takes site wide content into consideration. Although the open directory (dmoz.org) is used to some degree to rank sites, Fast is still using an algo more attuned to 2-3 years ago based on raw page performance (think keyword location and density). It's all based on the page. In fact, most of us feel Fast isn't counting links yet, however some of thier movement in sites over the last year has raised an eye brow in that direction.

All it really takes to rank well in fast is quality optimization. No gimmicks or fades are needed. I wouldn't use subdomains unless you have that much content to justify it. There won't be much difference to Fast.

[Haakon]

Thanks Brett!
I have good optimisation according to WPG, just waiting on fast to crawl, it was between the 3rd and 9th the last time (read from post); so it should be in about a week now right?

Something that is strange about fast is that it only prefers less than 4 keywords per page according to WPG (others prefer 11-15), do you agree with this ? How much of the market has alltheweb.com got anyway?

[Haakon]

Hi again, just want to share a smallsmall study:
I just ran a comparison chart of Fast,
Lycos and Google (in WPG). I found that Fast and Lycos was very vaulnerable for spam within the comment tags, the average top page had about 250 words in their comment tags and very high prominence, something that wasn`t the case with Google. If this wasn`t enough proof of bad filtering, 80% of the top pages on Fast/Alltheweb had text with same color as background. I know Fast isn`t as comprehensive as other engines, and I think that is good but these things are too easy to take advantage of.

[2_much]

Thanks for the information Haakon. Yes, Fast is still vulnerable to Spam but it is improving. It seems to be on most webmasters "to watch" list, especially if you're targeting an international audience.

[Macguru]

There is one thing I would like them to improve very soon. I have this specialised site using frames. Out of the 30 first results we leave only one spot for competitors. How do users react seeing the same domain all over the place?

[Robert Charlton]

>>Out of the 30 first results we leave only one spot for competitors. How do users react seeing the same domain all over the place?<<

I can't imagine users like it, and, when this happens to one of my sites it makes me nervous for that reason. I'm also concerned about how competitors might react.

As I've mentioned on other threads, I wish both Fast and Lycos would cluster their results with a link to "see more pages from this site." If anyone from Fast is reading this, it would be a major improvement, I feel, to the engine.

[Haakon]

I`ve been crawled by many engines now, but I see that I`m not listed (not the new pages). So isn`t the database updated live? When can I expect to see my new listings?

+ where does these two spiders belong?
-Sqworm/2
-Openfind piranha,Shark/0

thanks

[Brett_Tabke]

Most engines take 30days to three months (or twice a year like Excite).

Fast is running 14-30 days right now.