Fast Search Engine Optimization Tips

A Norway-based firm formed in 1997, FAST Search and Transfer made its big breakthrough in 1999 when it partnered with Dell to create the world’s largest web index. The result was the search engine Alltheweb. Today Alltheweb has an index rivaling Google’s. The most impressive feature of FAST is its speed. The engine is designed to respond to almost any search query within .05 seconds. FASTer on a more consistent basis than any other search engine.

On February 25, 2003, Overture acquired the Internet search unit of FAST for $70 million in cash, as well as a performance-based cash incentive payment of up to $30 million over three years. Combined with Overture’s previously announced plans to purchase the search engine Altavista, the joint expertise of the three search partners substantially bolster Overture’s quest for leadership in commercial search capabilities.

On July 14, 2003, Yahoo! Inc. announced it was buying Overture, in a $1.6 billion deal. This agreement brings not just Overture, but also allows Yahoo! to Integrate Inktomi, FAST, and Altavista into one massive, powerful search engine database.

FAST itself is similar to its new stablemate, Inktomi, which it now is part of with the acquisition of Overture by Yahoo!   FASTsearch is really a search technology company rather than a search engine. You cannot visit FAST to run a search, but you can use their technology at their client’s sites. Fast’s customers include Alltheweb, Lycos and LookSmart. LookSmart uses FAST’s search technology to search within its own directory. Alltheweb – powered by Fast Search – reportedly has one of the largest search engine databases. Alltheweb is the fastest search engine with an average response time under half a second per search. The Fast spider reads all text that appears on a page. Fast Search uses a crawler-based technology, thus any submission will lead to a full site being indexed.

Each of FAST’s customers apply their own algorithms to deliver the search results. FAST’s search technology also possesses advanced linguistics capabilities in almost 50 languages and has experienced operating technology teams. Accessing an index of more than 2.1 billion documents, FAST’s search results are among the most relevant on the Web.

Whether or not you are a Metamend client, if you would like to subscribe for an express listing in any of the search engines powered by FAST, we have built a client interface to allow you to subscribe for these services. Please visit our Pay for Inclusion Search Engine Signup Form.

With regards to what FAST’s search engine looks for, and when considering search engine optimization with regards to FAST, they have published this quote on their web site:

FAST Content Guidelines

“FAST content guidelines are intended to give content providers a clear indication as to what types of content are desired and undesired in the FAST Index with the goal of providing a satisfying and relevant search experience to the end user community. (…) content will be judged as to whether it is helping or hurting the relevancy of FAST search results via both human and automated techniques.

Techniques Content Providers Should Use:
  • Create a site containing unique high quality content with clear navigation and an intuitive hierarchy.
  • Link appropriately to interesting and useful content and make sure your owncontent is linked to from other pages on the web (one inbound link perpage is the minimum!).
  • Include Metadata (Title, description and keywords) that reflects the specific content of the page.
  • When writing your pages, think about using words or phrases that people aremore likely to type in a search box to find your pages

Many web pages are either of little or no value to users or are designed to intentionally trick a search engine into including inappropriate or low value results in response to a query. Search engines and users often refer to these listings as “search engine spam”. FAST is constantly patrolling the index to remove spam in order to improve the quality of search results and the end user experience.

Some examples of pages that exhibit “spam” techniques are:

  • Pages that negatively affect the ranking precision and diversity of search results.
  • Pages that give the search engine content that is topically different thanthe page the user sees (often referred to as “cloaking”).
  • Pages created exclusively for the purpose of stealthily redirecting the userto another page (often built to be attractive to a specific searchengine).
  • Excessively cross-linking between pages or sites to artificially inflate link popularity.
  • Pages stuffed with superfluous keywords that are irrelevant or do not make meaningful sense.
  • Pages, subdomains or domains that have substantially or very similar content.
  • Automatically generated pages created with the purpose of flooding search engine result pages.
  • The use of hidden text and hidden links.”
Search Engines That Depend On FAST Search Technology:
  • Lycos
  • Alltheweb
  • Excite
  • Infospace
  • Webcrawler
  • Dogpile
  • Metacrawler
  • T-online
  • LookSmart
  • ItaliaOnLine

Numerous others also depend on the FAST Search Technology. However, the above is the list of essentials.