Beating Lycos regional redirects

[rpking]

Does anybody have a good method of beating the Lycos.com redirect to co.uk? It is starting to annoy the hell out of me when trying to manually check rankings.

What do they use to determine your country? Is it a simple setting that I can change (I've tried clearing caches and changing my regional settings with no success). Is there a sly lycos cookie lurking on my machine that I can't find?

Another thing - what user-agent does WPG identify itself as? After the changes at Lycos recently, WPG is still returning the old Fast results from Lycos (I think, but without manual check I can't be too sure).

help...

[georged]

Surely you can just use the 'uk' or 'worldwide' buttons when you search on .co.uk ?
Or do you really need lycos.com?

[rpking]

Currently, .com and worldwide on co.uk show different results. As the majority of searches will be performed on .com, these are important results to check.

Funnily enough, I just checked this by going straight to lycos.com - no redirect! 15 minutes ago, I was redirected. ????

[littleman]

You are right lycos uk and com are showing different results. The easiest way around this foolishness is to use regional proxies. I think the business of redirecting surfers is really goofy. I used a proxy from Italy the other day to do some checking www.lycos.co.uk and it kept forcing me to the Italian site. So then I came at it from the U.S. and it let me in.

[rpking]

Using a proxy seems to beat Lycos when using IE or Netscape. However, WPG is still shown different results. Currently Lycos are delivering varied result sets dependant on user agent as well.

If I go to lycos.com with Lynx, there is no redirect, but I am shown different results to those via IE etc.

Producing different results for different global locations is understandable (if not ideal for SEO), but varying the results on browser type seems ridiculous. Hopefully this is still part of the shakeup at Lycos, and will not last.

However, in the meantime, I've got some great results in the new Fast database, but WPG does not report them. Here's what's worrying me; is this problem exclusive to Lycos...

[adamcmoran]

Try this link
[lycospro.lycos.com...]

You can do searches without it redirecting or at least I could but if you click on home you will end up back at UK.
What is annoying is that some clients have some good positions in Lycos Com but no one from the Uk can get to it Arghhhhhhhhh

[NFFC]

>but WPG does not report them

Hi rpking.

Are you saying that WPG is not showing your improvements in the Fast dB or that Lycos have not updated with the lastest Fast results?
I haven't seen Lycos update since the Fast changes at the beginning of December.

[Machiavelli]

Bizarrely, [www-english.lycos.com ] is American. Or at least, it works for me.

[rpking]

NFFC

When WPG queried alltheweb, it wasn't showing the new positions. As of 13th Dec, WPG is showing the new results.

And a WPG query at Lycos still doesn't show any of the new Fast data...