Anything new with Fast?

[2_much]

NFFC's post about Fast having the largest database piqued my attention. However, I can't seem to find much info. on Fast anywhere. I read every thread on Fast and gathered some information, but I was wondering if anyone is aware of any changes?
I have been submitting to Fast for months and have only gotten 1 (sigh, yes, 1) page listed. Brett mentioned that the algo is very simple, that a site optimized for AV should do well. However, I have many sites with great listings in AV, but NOTHING in Fast!!
I have been submitting to Fast twice a month for at least 4 months and have not gotten listed yet (don't know if I've been spidered, don't have access to logs).
Any suggestions or ideas?

TIA,
2Much

[pete]

Hi 2Much,

I have had the same experience. I was fortunate enough to get pages in when the fast spider was all over our logs and included most of our pages. BUT, new sites which have been optimized in the last three mths have not been included at all :(

Regards to AV and Fast, I had a doorway in AV which obtained a top three ranking for a single competative term. It was there for 2.5 weeks and then dissapeared entirely from the database. This page is now 9 on Fast and providing good steady traffic.

[2_much]

Thanks for your reply Pete! But, how did you do it? How did you get those pages listed in the first place?
After my post yesterday, I checked Fast once again and that lonely page that we had listed has been DROPPED!
Considering my sites are doing well in all of the other engines except this one, I figure I MUST be doing something wrong. Especially considering that Fast is trying to index as many pages as possible to have the largest database...but we can't get ANY pages listed!!!!!!!

Please, any guidance on what techniques are working with Fast would be highly appreciated. Or, at least what NOT to do!!

Thanks!

[rencke]

There is a fairly extensive technical description on their home page:
[fast.no...]
I am really surprised over hearing about difficulties to get into Fast. My experience is that they spider everything they can lay their hands on, and deep too. Very strange indeed.

[redzone]

True, but they have extremely "slow" hands.... :) They are month's behind spidering submissions, and their latest index is from a late summer crawling expedition.

FAST may have bragging rights for a large index, but they are "bottom rung" for timely crawling/re-index, and are an extremely "spam" laden index....

[2_much]

I'm very baffled over this. Weird thing is, we have been submitting to them since the end of July, so by now we should be getting some results.
Thanks for that link Rencke!I'm going to check it out and do some more extensive research. I will report here if I find anything interesting.

Thanks,
2M

[rencke]

> "bottom rung" for timely crawling/re-index

Somewhere here at WebmasterWorld there is a thread where someone reports on the huge amount of hands-on work that has to be done when updating an SE index. Can't find the thread right now, but that might account for it. Fast is a new and not very big organisation. In February they committed themselves to having an index of 1 billion pages by new year.

It could be that they have prioritized the spidering. Remember; Fast probably does not intent to be in the search engine business, but in the search engine software business and have been selling lots of licenses in Europe, Lycos Europe being the most prominent. www.alltheweb.com is just their shop window.