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I know that most people are concerned with Google, and rightly so, but what are peoples thoughts on optimizing for fast?
My main site is in the top three for it's search terms, but nowhere to be found in Fast. Instead, all of the spam sites show up...
How about we start a list, similar to what we see in the Google forum?
sure, you go first.
or giv the site search a try: fast algo [searchengineworld.com] :)
Haha, good one. I guess I was fishing a bit, I really don't have anything to offer, but I'm gonna search, summarize, and post. Soon. But I have to finish a clients site today, so soon may be tomorrow.
I was wondering because they must be considered the nest possible competition, no? But for me their serps are horrible, wrt spam etc.
Rumbas - Thanks for the links. I hadn't searched yet, but I'd browsed the forum and not seen anything too concrete. I guess until they bring people traffic they will remain a hobby for us.
Oh well, I'll post a summary when I get something together.
happy coding...
i guess youd disagree
To what are you referring?
So they don't send you much traffic now, but one day they might.
It seems that Fast is trying to get in the game with this latest algo shift. Lets try and sort out what works and what doesn't work.
- that either spammers get penalized a bit, or keyword density in the main text of a site just isn't too important. The spammers in 4th have a load of keyword dense stuff in <p> tags, though in the serp text below our site title they do pull in some <p> text from our site.
- that the title tag seems to be important, proximity of keywords and where they are in the title.
- that the meta-description seems to hold a bit of weight too.
- I'm not too sure about the weight of backlinks and inbound link text, as none of us in our sector have too much of either, in terms of backlinks or 'well worded' incoming link text.
Google provides the most traffic and thus gets the most attention. Inktomi is probably next with AltaVista, AJ/Teoma and Fast being the bit part players.
Personally, I had been doing well on most engines except Fast, until recently. The new change gets us some results in Fast, but my motivation for trying to figure them out was 'cause we stunk with them!
To me even after years fast rankings is a myst. However, one observation i made is: if you have a odp listing that uses the searched keyword in the link text *and* the listed url uses the keyword, you can gain "better" positions.
Unfortunately allthough i have such dmoz listings, my sites that are in general #2 to #3 for their main single keyword at google, are somewhere between #40 and #100 at fast! May be fast doesn't "count" my listings link text because it's dotted (thekeyword.mydomain.com).
Based on my experience when I do a Google optimization (not spam) I also get best results with FAST and Altavista.
Another point: FAST provides results for AWT and at least 20 european engines, so you have to sum their traffic.
