Fast announces new search engine index

The search engine size race goes on: Is Fast the largest?

October 13 2000

Here we go again: Another chapter in the ongoing "who's the meanest search engine in the world" saga.

Google says it has 1 billion pages in its index. But really, it doesn't. It has the full text of some 560 million pages, the rest are covered through links found on the indexed pages.

Then there is Inktomi, which is not a search site in its own right, but which feeds other search engines with listings. iWon is using the large version if their database -- the so called Gen3 -- covering some 500 million pages.

The Norwegian company Fast, however, has for a long time been determined to win back the throne of the largest search engine in the world, and yesterday they announced a new and updated index with over 575 million full-text Web documents.

"With the release of the current catalog on www.alltheWeb.com, we've taken an important step towards our previously announced goal of searching the entire Web," says Rob Fisher, CEO of FAST. "Since its launch, FAST Search has become one of the Web's most popular pure search engines, handling nearly 12 million searches per day from users that want a quick and easy way of searching the Web's most comprehensive catalog."

Does size matter?

Yes and no.

The chances are a large search index will contain more pages relevant to your information needs. On the other hand, the large number of pages makes it harder to find these pages. If your perfect site on vintage automobiles is listed as number 345, you will never find it. Fast has added some advanced search features, but in this respect it is still not good enough for the professional researcher.

• Fast press release
• Fast All the Web search engine
• American version of Lycos (powered by Fast)
• Pandia Post has an article on iWon.

More search engine news...