AlltheWeb.com Offers Near-Real-Time NEWS Indexing

[rcjordan]

Users can search more than 3000 online news sources for stories updated less than an hour earlier. [pcworld.com]

One-upping google on the news search. Good move.

[heini]

Brilliant move indeed.
Fast and Google - definitely in a class of their own. What amazes me is the technological competence demonstrated by those Norwegians. Taking their regular 12 days crawling pattern into account Fast is the fastest major engine alive.

As usual this feature will be displayed at Alltheweb showcasing their ability. Will Lycos sites pick it up? Will perhaps some other major go for it?

[pete]

Fast is impressive.

"Will perhaps some other major go for it?"

It would make my year if one or two of the majors decided to compete on freshness of their databases, increase their spidering cycles and shorten their inclusion time to appear in the results.

Sort of like back in 99 when the engines were competing for the largest database and optimisation was fun!

[chiyo]

Hopefully, one major will start indexing RSS format for news in a defined database. RSS is an accpted news aggregator format, many major news sources use the format, plus (which is the great plus) many unique sites (including original well run sites that nevetheless dont have the promotion clout of the majors) and weblogs which arenot covered by going to only mainstream news sites like CNN, NBS, BBC, etc etc. It allows news and new content on a Website to be updated at any interval suitable for the content.

Webmaster world has their own RSS delivery too.

<A HREF="www.syndic8.com">Syndic8</A> is an excellent resource for getting started and lists thousands of news sources in RSS format. (Its a non-commercial site, plse delete if not appropriate) There are also many portals deivering news through RSS including Daypop, newsisfree, etc.etc.

If one of the majors gets on to this, they will have a great competitive advantage.

[perkoch]

I have spoken to Rob Rubin of Fast regarding the update of AllTheWeb.

He says that the NEXT update will include true Boolean searching and a new search engine index of 2 billion pages.

(edited by: heini at 6:34 pm (gmt) on Nov. 10, 2001)

[heini]

In fact Fast now really reaches for the stars - becoming the No1 of the SEs. Reading the story on Pandia.com [pandia.com] it becomes clear that in more than one way Fast is not only on par with Google, but actually on the passing lane.
Fastīs Rob Rubin invited Pandia to take the new Alltheweb out for a ride - with impressive results. The news indexing is clearly the most obvious change, but Fast has some more new features upt the sleeve. A grouping of results in topics a la Teoma and Wisenut will be added, based on ODP categorizaton. Also new will be a seemingly very well working linguistic analysis of queries, resulting in announced rewriting of search phrases.
Next stop - 2 Billion pages!
Watch out Google - they are coming....

[NFFC]

>linguistic analysis of queries

To Improve Search Relevance through Deployment of Sophisticated Linguistic Techniques

[fastsearch.com...]

[heini]

The news indexing is live now - latest news on NY is indexed 27 min ago.

[Rumbas]

That is FAST!
Can't see the news in the SERPs at Lycos yet?

[stephen baker]

Hi all. This is Stephen from FAST. Thanks for the great comments on the new AlltheWeb. For those of you who have been following FAST for a while, you know that we roll things out on ATW first. After they have been fully tested in live production for a month or so, we make them available to our Portal Partners. It is then up to them to integrate the new features based on their "look-and-feel strategy."

There are essentially three classes of enhancements to this release:

1. News Search. This will be rolled out to our portal customers in December.
2. FAST Topics. Same as previous and it's really up to Lycos, T-Online, Tiscali, etc. to decide whether they want to deploy this feature or not.
3. Linguistics Framework (antiphrasing, etc.) is available immediately to our customers. This is very exciting as it has a tremendous impact on relevancy.

I hope this clarifies the new release a bit. Thanks again for the support!

[PageCount]

These are fantastic developments with far-reaching consequences for SEOs and end users. alltheweb now stands to come into its own as an engine of choice rather than as a mere provider of results to faceless partners around the globe.

At the close of last year, alltheweb and Google hogged the means to turning search into what I can only envisage as a "seamless" Web experience (sounds like a Microsoft press release).

Neither capitalized fully on its potential and, disappointingly, alltheweb looked as though it would become just another database dishing out results to all and sundry.

TEOMA and WiseNut hit the scene and we looked to them to stir up some dust. Nothing happened.

These new developments change the face of search and give those looking at next year with a somewhat baleful eye huge cause for optimism. Moreover, with Lycos being resuscitated for the event, the future looks a lot more open than it did a short while ago.

Remembering FAST's recent staff layoffs and financial straits, I guess we owe those involved in pulling the alltheweb into direct contention with Google a vote of thanks (albeit in different areas for now).

The sooner this potential powerhouse joins Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and AV as a primary traffic driver, the better for all of us.

[Napoleon]

Yes, I think FAST just moved up a gear. The topic box is interesting, and I guess enhances the position of ODP as well. It's placement and context sensitivity integrates the directory nicely.

I'm delighted with the changes and see a strong pure search and largely free facility as a very healthy development indeed. I am certain that FAST will continue to make ground, and fill at least some of the void left by ailing engines like AV, whose serps have been going in the opposite direction for years.

Thanks for your input here Stephen... and congratulations on these improvements.