Optimizing for All the Web

Is there some good info anywhere...

[steveb]

For each 400 referrals I get from Google I get one from fast/alltheweb. I get 20 times as many from altavista as Fast. The search results for my main single keyword are littered with pure gibberish results on Fast. There are some exceptions on phrases but for the most part even two word phrase searches turn up gibberish results.

So... what can be done about Fast? My site does fine on Google so I know that optimizing for Google has no reltionship with doing well on Fast.

My site already is in the Fast database, but it wasn't a paid inclusion. Do you need to pay to get improve placement, and if I do pay will I also slightly benefit in getting good placements in completely inapproriate search results?

There doesn't seem to be any material on Fast, I suppose because it seems like it is just random luck on how they place you, but given that they are trying to sell their junky results around, is their any strategy that seems to work? (Please assume good content and linking and a top ten Google listing.)

[indigojo]

I put it down to FAST/LYCOS just not having any where near the traffic that Google gets. We have nearly 4k pages in google and nearly 1k in FAST but we don't even get 1/100th of the traffic we get from Google via FAST related sites. As far as optimising my guess is you should apply the same rules for FAST as per Google and perhaps optimise your meta tags as well.

[agerhart]

Check out lazerzubb's great post on Fast/AllTheWeb and SEO [webmasterworld.com]

[martinibuster]

Fast seems to look for a match between the search terms and the title, description meta, and on the page data; in that particular order. Try a search for a competitive phrase like "free cgi scripts [alltheweb.com]"

BUT, there is also a randomizing factor in the algo that throws in a result that is related on theme but without the keywords anywhere on the page,title,etc. I think it may be that the terms appear on backward links. Try a search for "out of the box [alltheweb.com]" and you'll see that search results 5 and 7 are anomalies.

Fast is an interesting search engine and I'm definitely keeping my eye on it because, in the future, it could be playing an important role in the U.S. market.