FAST / Google: Differences in algo and ranking

[soapystar]

how can i be number 1 on google for a keyword and not in the first 100 on fast?....something aint right!

[coconutz]

I wonder the same thing.

[lavapies]

i am also on first page for google on many keyphrase cmobos and not figuring in fast in the first 100 .. 112 i come in at .. very odd!

[lavapies]

p.s. i wouldn't care except for the fact that FAST seems to be getting a lot more popular in the UK.

IMO their index is OK and their advanced search is great.. but there seem to be a number of URLs that ocuppy multiple listings for certain SERPS.

For example if i search for "xyz" .. URL "x**" may appear 10 times on the first page... this is very very bad.

[newsparrot]

seems I must have done something wrong this time, first to last on atm, yet top on google, et all.

How can the algro for each be so different?
I thought key words were important, or is it more to do with links, as in google?

[mosley700]

My philosophy here ( - unsolicited boring rant alert - ):
You can't pander to all of the search engines. Choose the one that is most important to you ( google ) and commit.
A couple months ago I had my panties in a wad because I was not on AOL, and my target audience uses AOL. I wasn't on AOL because Inktomi thought my meta title was keyword abusive.
Well, I could change my meta title, and lose thousands of visitors from Google and Google-powered search engines, but I chose to stick with Google, and I prayed that God would punish Inktomi for abusive anal-retentiveness.
And look what happened! Inktomi was dropped by AOL and God's annoited search engine, Google, replaced it.
Chose one and commit.

[soapystar]

nice post mosley!..google to rule the world..at least u know where u stand with it!..out of interest..what was it that made them object to your meta tag?

[martinibuster]

I suspect that they give more weight to on the page data.

One area where they definitely differ in is how they filter results that come from a single domain:

FAST filters repetitive results. So, if you search for a company name, or the name of a celebrity, you will see one result from many domains and subdomains, but rarely several listings from the same domain.

Run the same search with Google and you'll receive an exhaustive listing of many pages from a particular domain: the Press Corner, About Us page, Products page, and anything else it has.

Fast seems weighted to bring in a great variety of answers that are on topic, whereas google wants to bring in the same answers but in greater detail, even if it is repetitive. I'm not making a value judgement as to which one is better. I am only making an observation.

Try it out for yourself.

Has anyone else spotted a demonstrable difference in their algos?

[topr8]

Run the same search with Google and you'll receive an exhaustive listing of many pages from a particular domain: the Press Corner, About Us page, Products page, and anything else it has.

not for me, i always find a max of 2 results returned per domain if i have preferences set for 100 results a page and only 1 per domain when set for 10 per page.

i think that the odp has a lot of weighting on google which lifts sites, i notice non odp sites returning higher in Fast than in google, haven't been able to prove it but it holds some for keywords that interest me.

[martinibuster]

topr8,
All things being equal, the results I stated will bear out. But that's an interesting observation nonetheless of what happens when you limit google results.

non odp sites returning higher in Fast

Now that's a really interesting observation.

I'm on a mac right now, so I can't test it out. But I know a really good search term to test this out on (lots of non-odp results). Will test it out when I get back home.

[mosley700]

soapystar,

Here is a generic version of my meta title:
Site Name - Kewords Keywords, Kewords Keywords, Kewords Keywords, Kewords Keywords, Kewords Keywords, Kewords Keywords, Kewords Keywords, Kewords Keywords, Kewords Keywords, Kewords Keywords, Kewords Keywords, Kewords Keywords, Kewords Keywords

Do you think I overdid it?
:)

[edited by: heini at 9:27 am (utc) on Sep. 24, 2002]
[edit reason] see sticky mail [/edit]

[martinibuster]

Wow! :o

That's so 1998!

[mosley700]

1998? Was the Internet around back then?

[wingslevel]

difference in algos....

i think the biggest difference is in the weighting of the title - with google, you are nowhere without keywords in your title - not so with fast. they seem to like lots of text high on the page.

[GetVisible]

I agree about loads of similar pages from the same domain getting listed near the begining. I've seen litterely 20 of the "same" pages (bar changes in kw's) - not only but I also have seen virtually the content over a range of domains i.e.

kw1-hotel.co.uk
kw2-hotel.co.uk
....
kw20-hotel.co.uk

don't Alltheweb have a similarity detector in it's algo?