Ranking problems and Fast paid submit?

Report details to Fast here

[FastMatt]

Hi. This is Matt and I work on the PartnerSite project at Fast.

We have been and are continuing to investigate any issues with sites that have
had their rank affected after inclusion into the program. Any specific information
(keyword and url combinations with rank before/after inclusion) that anyone here is
willing to provide the team to help diagnose this issue would be appreciated. Please
send specifics to my sticky mail...

[heini]

Hi Matt - welcome to WebmasterWorld! Thanks for opening up a dialog on this issue.
Many people here have been quite happy with the different packages of paid inclusion at Fast, but some have experienced problems.

Fantastic if together we could shed some light on this!

So folks, if you have serious problems with PartnerSite (Lycos InSite), and you are sure it's not on your side, give Matt a sticky.
Please make sure not to flood his box with unrelated stuff so that he actually can help people whose rankings have plummetted after paid inclusion.

Welcome FastMatt!

[Rumbas]

Hi Matt - Welcome to (your) forum :)

What a pleasure seeing you joining in. As heini says, some members have been experiencing some problems with the service. Far from everybody, and my own experience have been good, but good to see you caring and let's hope that we can all learn from it.

Guys & girls, be nice to Matt and try to keep as much conversation out here in the forum so we all benefit.

[makemetop]

Yes, thanks. And may I also thank the FAST representatives who approached me about this issue at PubConference. I am sure we all appreciate that FAST are taking this issue seriously and I'm grateful for them looking into it at a senior level.

[caine]

Nice too see you join us on the boards, Matt. I'm sure you will get loads of useful feedback, as time goes by.

[Shakil]

Matt,

great to see you here, and wish you all the best.

just to clarify matters are you dealing just with the Lycos side of things, or also PositionTechs submissions for FAST.

Shak

[heini]

So anybody had any luck contacting FastMatt? Or nobody has a problem with dropped rankings after signing up for the Fast PartnerSite?

[The Contractor]

Heini,

I can’t say I have problems with Fasts paid submit. I have more of a problem with their algo. If I do a search for a certain two word phrase on alltheweb, the first 150 positions are all by the same company/site. Leaves a lot to be desired……

[sahara]

Dear Fast,

I signed up for paid inclusion a few weeks ago. I used to be quite prominent, but now I'm hard to find - even with very specific keywords. My account says that 10 pages have been successfully crawled OK, with the same 10 currently pending. When I manage to find my site in AlltheWeb and look for more results from my site I only get 2 pages.

Are my pages dropped after a crawl while they are pending? If so they might only be in the database half the time!

Please get in touch.

Regards Sahara

(and feeling deserted :( - gedditt! :) )

[ikbenhet1]

Same thing happended to me.

Nice listing in fast, then i got the 'fast' paid listing and disappeard for 2 weeks out of the fast results and then got back again.

The only advantage i see is, you can see the clicks on your links, but i don't think i get more visitors then i already did from fast before the paid submission.

[sahara]

Dear Ikbenhet1,

are you saying that eventually you *do* get back in the listings?

Secondly to the moderators - how do I ensure Fastweb is aware of my message

[ikbenhet1]

yes i got back in the results, but i don't know if it was the manual submissions or the paid listing that got it back there, i did some manual also.

So.. Now i can 'check' my clicks, and my account states:
kliks rank
2 46

That seems to be very little visitors for a page that ranks on page #1 for the a main keyword of that domain.

weird

[Rumbas]

Sahara, FAST will see your message right here on the board.

Ikbenhet1, if your stats show ranking 46 and 2 clicks, that's pretty good ;)

[heini]

The problem that some people experience with their paid pages is very likely the same problem some people experience with their free listings.
We have had those reports every once in a while here on the board. I suppose it's some slight glitches we are seing somewhere in computing the index, perhaps in the ranking process.

Since PFI pages are ranked for the exact same criteria as all other pages, the same problems would hit both.

Sahara, FastMatt asked specifically to contact him by sticky mail in case of PFI pages having significantly lost rankings, read first message.

[sahara]

Will do Heini - I've read the first mail - but I figured that reply notification might work better to FastMatt with an addition to the thread rather than with a sticky.

I recall that some time ago you wrote that PFI might use a *different* database than non-PFI - correct me if I'm wrong.

[heini]

>different db
Yep, that's why I think it's in the ranking process, which applies to both, paid and unpaid pages.

[sahara]

If they both use the same algo, then of course ranking problems will hit both PFI and non-PFI.

But if the PFI database isn't working properly then this is a technical argument - the most serious ranking problem of all is not being included!

[heini]

No, it's not like inclusion would be a problem. Pages get included all right, but some pages, and from what I have heard and see it's really a very small percentage, lose all of a sudden rankings. Some seem to flush back and forth between *proper* ranking, some get buried for a while until all of a sudden they reappear at roughly the same spots where they had been before.

PFI pages not getting spidered, or only sometimes getting spidered, is another most likely unrelated thing .

[sahara]

I'm confused.

Inclusion is *indeed* a problem - how can it not be in a search engine! You concur(and originally suggested) that PFI and non-PFI are using different databases; and you agree that listings are misbehaving.

So what, precisely, is the message that you are trying to convey?

What I am trying to convey is clear enough - there is a serious problem with my account.

[edited by: heini at 4:40 pm (utc) on Oct. 24, 2002]

[heini]

Sahara, I know there's a problem with your account ;) Looks very much like that is a different problem from what this thread is about.
You see, this thread, and the offer FastMatt makes, is about people doing PFI, getting indexed, but losing rankings afterwards.
Whereas you say your paid pages are not in the index alltogether.
Furthermore you say, your pages get crawled, but not indexed. This sounds to me like Fast's spider has problmes getting to your pages.

[heini]

Sahara:
- Did you solve the problem of the missing "www" in your submissions?
- Did your paid pages get spidered? Did you see the Fast spider in your logfiles?
- Are your paid pages in Fast's index?

[sahara]

-The www problem has been corrected (my edit: some time ago, I've been patiently waiting for an improvement). It is nevertheless odd that a spider cannot deal with the addition/omission of www when my site is easily accessible using either.
-I've stated earlier in the thread that pages have been spidered "ok", but that currently they are "pending"
-not as far as I can see

[sahara]

Update:

In the past few minutes I've just checked my account and now have no information at all:

the message is

The Spidering Statistics are currently unavailable.

[heini]

>My account says that 10 pages have been successfully crawled OK
That's why I asked if you found the spider in your logs. I would not trust this message but rather check myself.

If the pages are in the index can be checked with this command:
url.all:www.example.com

Anyway, either it's a problem on your side, something that hinders Fast's spider to grab your pages, or it's a problem on Fast's side, like they can't for some technical reason insert your pages to the db.

I have over the last days seen an occasional report of similar problems, so it looks like we might see a problem with the InSite program.

Anybody else seeing this problem?

[NFFC]

>What I am trying to convey is clear enough

sahara let me try and convey this to you, it should be clear enough.

If you are having problems with a service that you have paid for contact the people you paid.

If that fails contact the people who ultimatley provide the service, from what I hear the customer service is excellent.

If the [imho] the good advice you have received thus far is not worthy of your consideration then so be it.

This is not the Fast support desk.