Fast is Now Twice the Freshness of Google, and Six Times the News

[Sharon & Roy]

Fast is Now Twice the Freshness of Google, and Six Times the News (http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/011115/152220_1.html)




Thursday November 15, 8:58 am Eastern Time

Press Release

SOURCE: Fast Search & Transfer

Fast's New AlltheWeb Search Service Garners Industry Acclaim
Twice the Freshness of Google, and Six Times the News Creates Major Industry Buzz

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 15, 2001--Fast Search and Transfer(TM) (FAST), a leading developer of search and real-time content filtering technologies, garnered major industry acclaim within 48 hours of the launch announcement of the most comprehensive integrated search and news resource on the Internet at www.AlltheWeb.com Indexing up to 800 news stories per minute and real-time indexing of news stories from over three thousand online sources, AlltheWeb is twice as fresh as Google, with six times more news than Google.

Industry experts, writers, analysts, consultants, and observers have proclaimed AlltheWeb a viable contender to the search engine throne.

``Over the past year or so, it has become customary to think of Google as the best pure search engine around. Frequent searchers have gotten used to saying that Google is the freshest, fastest, most relevant, easiest to use, and so on. The release today of a new version of AllTheWeb, the public search site operated by Fast Search & Transfer (FAST), calls that comfortable assumption into question. In fact, for searches related to news and current events, it blows the conventional wisdom about Google right out of the water.'' 11/12/01, Kevin Elliot, About.com's Guide to Web search

``I have liked the last few versions of AllTheWeb, but the newest version with the most excellent news search makes it a must-see.'' 11/13/01, Tara Calashain, ResearchBuzz.com.

``Fast sees crawling at high speed as its trademark. The general search index is refreshed every nine to 12 days. Google, Fast's main competitor, reports it refreshes about once a month and AltaVista admits it is months behind with refreshing, resulting in outdated search results.'' 11/08/01, Joris Evers, IDG News Service.

``We have said it before and we say it again: The Fast AllTheWeb search site is becoming one of the very best on the Web...By introducing these improvements the Fast team has clearly demonstrated that they are the masters of one of the very best search engines on the Web. The quality and relevance of search results is continuously improving, partly because of the introduction of new anti-spam technology. When Internet searchers realize this, Google will have to face some stiff competition.'' 11/10/01, Per Koch, Pandia.com.

``In fact Fast now really reaches for the stars - becoming the Number One of the search engines (SEs)... Reading the story on Pandia.com it becomes clear that in more than one way Fast is not only on par with Google, but actually on the passing lane.'' 11/10/01, Ulrich Klammt, Moderator, WebMasterWorld.com

``I have tested and compared between AlltheWeb, Google, AltaVista and others over that past few days. The short verdict: AlltheWeb Rules!'' 11/12/01, Kevin Elliot, About.com's Guide to Web Search

``FAST Search and Transfer isn't known for stealth technology, but it should be. Its AllTheWeb.com search engine has snuck up on all of the major search engines with new features, speed and customization capabilities, and is now a viable challenger to pack-leader Google.'' 11/13/01, Chris Sherman, SearchDay, daily newsletter from SearchEngineWatch.com.

Customers of FAST have responded favorably as well:

``FAST continues to raise the bar on Web search technology,'' said Bryan Burdick, Vice President of Portal Services at Terra Lycos. ``We look forward to further enhancing our newly re-designed search experience at Lycos.com with this compelling feature from FAST as quickly as possible.''

Try www.AlltheWeb.com for yourself and see why AlltheWeb was chosen as one of USAToday.com's Hot Site of the Day(TM) on 11/14/01.

[ihelpyou]

Yes, I am happy they are making progress. They need to get some traffic though before they can claim "better than Google". Hopefully it will come.

[janardan]

Sure, Doug.

Thank you for participating in the FAST PartnerSite Beta program. The goal is to demonstrate the value of our index inclusion/site search program. This program is free of chargein exchange for your valuable customer feedback.
https://partnersite.fastsearch.com/

That's must be the case. Though they are pretty interesting and speedy se. But if they cater free submissions the way AV and Inktomi do, Google will retain the throne. :D

[webgator]

I know that AllTheWeb/Fast was being praised for a quick update time a few months ago, refreshing the database every 9-12 days...but does anybody know if there have been any refreshes in the month of December. Some checking of work I have done doesnt seem to suggest that there has been an update this month. Also, is there any similar method to checking for an update such as the so called "Google Dance" that is often mentioned in the forums.

Thank you

[markymark]

WebGator, I was actually going to ask this question myself. I think the answer is no, I haven't seen any new pages included in a little over a month and it is becoming frustrating for me, as Lycos UK drives some reasonable traffic.

There was a statement made by Fast that because of all the new features implemented, the re-index was delayed, but this is getting a little long now. However, I have seen some slight movement in sites already included in the database, but I'm not sure what this was (algo tweak, I think).

[nudetravel]

I couldn't find any prices on the service? However, I did read that if you leave the program your site gets dropped from the index: http://fastsearch.com/products/internet/partnersite_faq.asp#1 .

surely they won't double the price every year or something?