DMOZ Descriptions at FAST?

[keyplyr]

Has anyone seen sites in AllTheWeb or Lycos with descriptions from Open Directory? The reason I ask is, my site description has switched from the META version to the one written by an editor at DMOZ. I was unaware that FAST / ATW / Lycos used anything at all from DMOZ. Has this been in effect long?

[heini]

I usually find descriptions being drawn from the meta tag on the page.
Many pages which don't have the meta desc set don't show anything at ATW.
So, why and in which cases Fast uses the ODP description, I can't tell.

There has however been always a connection between Fast results and ODP.
You could see how it worked when ATW still displayed the Topics. The taxonomy of those topics was based on the categorial structure of the ODP.

[keyplyr]

Maybe it's PositionTech? Dozens of my entry pages have always been in the Fast db, but my index page would sometimes disappear for weeks, then appear again - very strange, but always with the proper description from the META tags.

I recently added Fast to my PositionTech (PT) account. Now the index page has appeared again (bravo) but with the awful description written by DMOZ. I telephoned PT and was told the META description should be showing. I wonder if anyone will fix it?

[keyplyr]

Update

Spoke with both Fast and PositionTech. Fast denied anything wrong, even when I asked them to conduct a search and look at the results.

PositionTech, on the other hand, was glad to help and did some checking. They said that hundreds of complaints were rolling in about Fast using DMOZ descriptions. They also said that Fast was indeed aware of this problem and were taking measures to correct it.

It seems, acording to PT, there are different algorithms for the Fast db and their PFIs.

[Jim_Stob]

keyplyr,

Sounds like you may have received incorrect information from someone here. I believe we have only had a few questions about the DMOZ description displaying.

I did talk to FAST a few days ago about a subscribed URL which was displaying the DMOZ description. They are not sure why the URL is displaying the description but they will track it down. FAST has been very good with support issues, I have no doubt they will track this down soon.

[keyplyr]

I believe we have only had a few questions about the DMOZ description displaying. - Jim_Stob

Thanks, that's good to know. Maybe it will get corrected sooner if there are less occurrences to deal with... been about a week so far.

[msgraph]

If you want to tap into some of FAST and ODP:

firstpage.alltheweb.com