Optimizing for ATW?

Can you, and is it worth it?

[WindSun]

ATW gives some indications of trying to move up in the world to compete with Google. We have not seen much increase in traffic from them, but that is perhaps because we never paid much attention to them.

Now, it appears that it may be time to do so. Question is, is there anything any different about optimizing for ATW than for Google or any other SE?

[skibum]

Not worth it IMO

[mat_bastian]

I think forward thinkers would be wise to not turn a blind eye to ATW. It has been said many times on these forums. Good engine now has promotional muscle to change SE landscape. I'll be looking into optimizing for FAST. Sorry I can't help you yet as It would be an engine that I have never focused on, but I do hope to hear some good helpful posts from those in the know about what ATW likes.

[heini]

>not worth it
That's open to debate. Given the eternal confusion caused by ATW being a showcase for FAST, it needs to be repeated over and over again:
Traffic from Fast is traffic from Lycos, from T-online, from several other european portals, here's a chart:
FAST Portal Partners 2002 [webmasterworld.com]
It's definitly more important for european traffic than purely US traffic.

Now that Fast has sold the websearch divison, including ATW, to Overture, nobody can say how the future traffic coming from being indexd there is going to develop.

Similarly undefined is what the future algo and inclusion mechanism will look like.
I surely expect changes to come. Overture says, and I tend to believe that, they plan to unite the search technologies from Altavista and Fast, with Gary Flake [webmasterworld.com] leading the process.

At this point for optimization for ATW I recommend the same techniques as for Google, with the exception of excessive usage of backlinks.
Generally a really good onpage optimization is more important than with Google, especially important area is <title>.

[hamster77]

Well, I'm not sure how I do it, but somehow I manage to get most of our sites into the top three for their search terms on alltheweb without even trying. On the other hand no matter how hard I try with Google it seems to be an uphill struggle just to stay put in the same place.
My guess would be that site description and content is more important than backlinks for atw.
Now I just wish someone would use it to search...

[rfgdxm1]

>At this point for optimization for ATW I recommend the same techniques as for Google, with the exception of excessive usage of backlinks.
Generally a really good onpage optimization is more important than with Google, especially important area is <title>.

I agree here. The big difference from Google is off page stuff just isn't that important.

[horda]

2RX: Yes and no, my experience is that some page with 400 backlinks, which contain _NO_ keyword or keyword phrase, is in SERP higher than a page with only 30 backlinks, but three of them contain keyword phrase.

First page contains the keyword phrase only one time. Second contains part of the keyword phrase in H1 tag and several times in text and the second part of the phrase in STRONG tag.

So I mean that for ATW is more important ammount of backlinks than their quality.

[oLeon]

>>Now I just wish someone would use it to search...
I am happy, that nobody uses ATW - but Lycos, Terra, Tiscali, T-Online.de.... ;-)

The title and content thing I agree, I really canīt see the backlinks thing. Can be, thatīs only the amount and nothing more.

I cannot see differences in rankings on the partner-resultpages from FAST. Does anybody else?

[edit_g]

One of our sites is optimised for ATW/Fast "by accident" (I think you know what I mean) on about 5-10 good key phrases and we see no significant traffic at all.

But it would be a foolish SEO who didn't at least keep one beady eye on it, it may well be a big(er) player not to far into the future.

[Brian]

For a lot of my keywords, I rank quite similarly in Google and Fast. My logs show virtually no traffic from Fast.

[heini]

Brian, you don't get traffic from Fast. Fast is a tech company. Fast.no, Fastsearch.com are company websites.

Similar to Inktomi Fast sells their websearch to portals. In Europe you get some traffic from Fast via their portal partners.

However Fast has sold their websearch divison, including their own search destination, AlltheWeb, to Overture.

[richardb]

I think ATW is keeping an eye on.

Mat & Heini have summed up (my own thoughts), however, on newly submitted sites (dynamic) we are starting to see results from ATW and recently on the new Yahoo SE

[webmasterworld.com...]

ATW dominated results on a fairly niche set of keyphrases.

Given that Yahoo seems to be making a stab at regaining lost ground, I guess it's only a matter of time before they dump Google. As for optimisation see Google, IMHO.

Rich

[Tor]

Given that Yahoo seems to be making a stab at regaining lost ground, I guess it's only a matter of time before they dump Google. As for optimisation see Google, IMHO.

Yes, but not until next year [webmasterworld.com]. ;)

[HitProf]

It's worth it :)

Optimize for Google and you'll do well in ATW as well. ATW pays less attention to incoming links.

[heini]

>Optimize for Google and you'll do well in ATW
Yes, as long as optimizing for Google means more than manical link/PR hunting.
On page optimization is important. Titles are extra important.