Fast has the largest search engine database

(June 18 2002) As noted in the Pandia Searchworld weblog section on June 14, Fast is again leading the search engine race -- as regards size that is.

Fast is a Norwegian search engine that can be accessed at Fast's own AllTheWeb site, and through a large number of portals around the world, the most prominent being Lycos.com. Fast has slowly become one of the major players on the search engine scene, and delivers results that can compete with the mighty popular Google.

In a press release Fast notes that AllTheWeb "searches 2,095,568,809 Web pages versus the 2,073,418,204 Web pages listed on Google's home page as of June 16th, 2002. "

Note the word "Web pages". Last year Google announced that it had broken the 3 billion documents barrier. However, only 2 billion of these were Web pages, and not all of them fully indexed, which is why Fast may make such a bold claim.

Does it matter? There is a psychological element here, of course. At the moment there is a fierce struggle going on between the major search engines, Google, Fast and Inktomi. They fight for searchers and they woe search portals looking for search engine providers. For instance: Yahoo! is negotiating with Fast and Google on who is to become the future search engine results provider for this very important search portal.

By showing potential customers that they have a technology that can handle 2 billion Web pages, Fast engenders trust. Indeed, Dr. John M. Lervik, chief executive officer of FAST, says as much:

"Fast's mission is to deliver leading real-time search and information retrieval technology to our clients, The index size of AlltheWeb demonstrates the unique scalability of our search products, while support for multiple file and language types displays our flexibility and universal search abilities."

Fast is also selling search software and search solutions for company Web sites, intranets and extranets. These solutions are based on the same technology as the AllTheWeb search engine. This is just the kind of stuff that looks good in company reports.

Does a larger database help the searcher? Not necessarily if he or she is looking for more general information on a common topic, let's say "car repair" or "renaissance painting". Both Google and Fast will include and give prominent display to authoritative and content-rich sites on such topics -- sites that may guide the searcher to relevant stops on the Web.

Searchers looking for a particular piece of information -- let's say a particular classic car or an obscure renaissance painter -- will benefit greatly from a larger index. Fast is now indexing more sites and more pages from each site, meaning the chances of finding your particular page increase.

This is also good news for Web masters. The chances of someone finding their pages increase, and thus -- hopefully -- also the number of visitors.

See also: Webmaster World discussion.

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