Why is it that ALLTHEWEB never quite caught on?!

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Why is it that ALLTHEWEB never quite caught on?!

They have everything going for them - don't they?

SEoptimization

8:59 pm on Oct 16, 2003 (gmt 0)

Was it due to relevancey or publicity/marketing?

pmac

9:23 pm on Oct 16, 2003 (gmt 0)

Maybe they weren't bold enough.

NFFC

9:25 pm on Oct 16, 2003 (gmt 0)

Lack of ambition.

martinibuster

9:27 pm on Oct 16, 2003 (gmt 0)

Alltheweb was never a destination site. It was meant as a showcase for FAST technology.

heini

9:32 pm on Oct 16, 2003 (gmt 0)

Mostly because they happened to try it when there was Google.

In hindsight the strategy of concentrating on selling to portals certainly didn't help.
Fast ASA is a technology company. Other than Google they never fully concentrated on websearch. The bigger part of their business has always been corporate search and search technology.

But then they sold their websearch divison for a good sum, so it was far from being a failure.

What happens to the technology, and the brand, under new ownership is still to be seen.

Nick_W

9:33 pm on Oct 16, 2003 (gmt 0)

>>Lack of ambition.

And scandinavians just are'nt mean enough...

Nick

Brett_Tabke

9:37 pm on Oct 16, 2003 (gmt 0)

> relevancy

We have a winner, we have a winner.

Google had nothing to do with AllTheWebs status as a SE. They just never quite had the algo to compete - close, but not close enough. I hate to say it, but there are keyword sectors in atw that are vaste wastelands of spam. The same sectors in Google are pretty clean.

agerhart

9:42 pm on Oct 16, 2003 (gmt 0)

>>>>but there are keyword sectors in atw that are vaste wastelands of spam.

I think that you could say the same for Google, Inktomi, etc., etc.

heini

9:49 pm on Oct 16, 2003 (gmt 0)

There's a threshold where users are not satified with results and start migrating. Both Google and ATW were far above that threshold.

Apart from that: what users? ATW never had any users. They had portals with once good marketshares. Those portals now loose users big time to Google, even though they serve Google results by now.

The old relevancy argument - we could go over that ad nauseam, in the end it has nothing to do with success or failure of ATW.

Shak

9:53 pm on Oct 16, 2003 (gmt 0)

maybe the creators of ATW never read "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, by: Malcolm Gladwell."

Thanx Tedster...

Shak

claus

10:50 pm on Oct 16, 2003 (gmt 0)

It seems ATW read 37% of it which cover the essentials or the "need-to-know", and a fair bit more. It's a quite repetitive book.

While we're at it... The phrase "never quite caught on" is past tense - that's perhaps a bit too soon, as "They have everything going for them".

One thing that has always bugged me; marketing two things at the same time, even two names (fast + alltheweb).

/claus

killroy

11:03 pm on Oct 16, 2003 (gmt 0)

Well, as long as you have to "talk about a company in quotes" I can't say they're exactly primed for success.

;)

Rumbas

1:57 pm on Oct 17, 2003 (gmt 0)

They never promoted it. Was/is just a showcase.

Fruit and Veg

2:16 pm on Oct 17, 2003 (gmt 0)

I like their image search - not only the results but the navigation of it.

I have a soft spot for atw. They're like an old pair of slippers.

Chndru

2:18 pm on Oct 17, 2003 (gmt 0)

me thinks they just tried to immitate G a little too much and were waiting for G to mess things up a little..

rfgdxm1

3:09 pm on Oct 17, 2003 (gmt 0)

>I think that you could say the same for Google, Inktomi, etc., etc.

Yep. In fact, Google may have more of a spam problem. Likely not due to Alltheweb being better, but because spammers focus on spamming Google SERPs. Spammers aren't staying up late at night trying to figure out how to spam ATW. Any success in spamming ATW is likely accident rather than design.