Inktomi reaches 2 billion Web pages

(August 9 2002, update August 10) Inktomi catches up on Fast and Google with a new enlarged search engine database.

Fast AlltheWeb recently became the No. 1 search engine in the world as regards the number of Web pages included in the search engine index (standing at 2.1 billion Web pages).

Inktomi, which powers HotBot and the MSN.com portal, is closing in. According to a company spokesperson on Webmaster World Inktomi is now "searching more than 2 billion web pages."

This is good news for Inktomi, as it proves that Inktomi is not going to give up their position as one of the major search engines without a fight.

Some Web masters, however, are grumbling. (Yeah, yeah, some of us our are never satisfied).

Although Inktomi now includes more high quality Web pages than ever before, many sites that are using their paid inclusion program (i.e. sites that pay to get their Web pages spidered more frequently) have found no additional "free" pages.

We will wait and see. This discrepancy may be caused by growing pains, and may be fixed by Inktomi at a later stage.

In Pandia's opinion paying and non-paying sites should be treated according to the same rules -- with one exception: Paying pages should be visited every 48 hours. This is what we pay for.

As regard search engine sizes Google is not the one that wants to be left out in the cold. According to Virtual Acquisition Google has now reached a number of 2.4 billion pages, giving the search engine a lead position. Stay tuned!

Correction

In the previous version of this article we wrote that we only could find the Pandia pages we had paid for in the Inktomi index. We used the Positiontech Inktomi index search engine to check this. A helpful reader has told us that Pandia has hundreds of pages listed in the HotBot UK version of Inktomi.

We stand corrected. Inktomi loves us after all!

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