THE CURRENT VERSION IS SEY 2003

(2003 Overview)

AlltheWeb URL's

AlltheWeb Main: http://www.alltheweb.com/
AlltheWeb Advanced search: http://www.alltheweb.com/advanced
Submission URL: http://www.alltheweb.com/help/webmaster/submit_site.html
Contact URL: http://www.alltheweb.com/info/contact/
Physical address: 393 Vintage Park Dr, Foster City, CA 94404
Phone number: (866) 765-6754
Preferences: http://www.alltheweb.com/customize?withjs=1&page=basic
AlltheWeb Help & FAQs: http://www.alltheweb.com/help/
AlltheWeb "skins": http://www.alltheweb.com/help/alchemist/gallery.html

The Company

Fast launched in May 1999 - branded as "Fast" until 2001, when the site was redesigned under the "AlltheWeb" brand. Now, AlltheWeb is the public search engine and technology showcase for Fast Search & Transfer, ASA (http://www.fastsearch.com).

Towards the end of 2001 this company really started to look like the one that could dethrone Google. They were very committed; their press releases sounding a lot like Google's when Google was still a wannabe.
Rob Rubin of Fast said:

"We said we would deliver the freshest results, and we've done it… Next, we're going for size - early next year, we'll be the biggest, with more Web objects indexed than any other engine."

They continue to work very hard, rolling out many new features and improving their search engine in many areas, but Google's popularity hasn't peaked yet. After all, the folks at Google are working just as hard.

Size & Freshness At AlltheWeb

Here's what AlltheWeb claims (December 2002):

AlltheWeb indexes over 2.1 billion web pages, 118 million multimedia files, 132 million FTP files, two million MP3s, 15 million PDF files and supports 49 languages,
making it one of the largest search engines available to search enthusiasts. AlltheWeb provides the freshest information because we update our index every 7 to 11 days and index up to 800 news stories per minute from 3,000 news sources.

AlltheWeb Skins

I wouldn't have thought that skins for a search engine is such a great marketing idea. Shows you how little I know.

AlltheWeb held a skin design competition and from what I can see, it was a huge success. You can visit the skins gallery at: http://www.alltheweb.com/help/alchemist/gallery.html.

The original press release is available at:
http://www.fast.no/press/press_display.asp?pr_rel=201.

(2002 Overview)

NOTE: For a more recent overview of AllTheWeb, please refer to the current version of the Search Engine Yearbook

AllTheWeb URLs

Main: http://www.alltheweb.com/
Submission URL: http://www.bos2.alltheweb.com/add_url.php3
Contact URL: http://www.alltheweb.com/feedback.php
Physical address: 393 Vintage Park Dr, Foster City, CA 94404
Phone number: (866) 765-6754

Notes on AllTheWeb

Fast launched in May, 1999 - branded as "Fast" until 2001, when the site was redesigned under the "AllTheWeb" brand.

Not Just HTML

Google may have a picture search, but AllTheWeb has picture search, video search and MP3 search. This gives them a nice reach into areas not well covered by most of the other engines. However, unlike Google, it does not yet index pdf files.

It Is (or was) Not Called "Fast" For Nothing

With an average response time of less than half a second per search, it is reportedly the fastest search engine of them all. It also has the second largest index of web sites (Google is in first place). Now they're even threatening to overtake Google.

Read on...

Narrowing Your Search

AllTheWeb offers a couple of ways to weed out irrelevant search results. You can limit your search to pages in a specific language.

Think you can't find pages in only in Estonian? You can. And there are 45 other languages you can pick. Very nice.

Apart from limiting the language, you can also pick the domains to include / exclude from your search results. You can, for example, ask that only sites on a .za domain be displayed to only see sites based in South Africa.

And Then, On November 12…

Karumba! A major redesign at AllTheWeb with some exciting new features.

Rob Rubin of Fast says:

"We said we would deliver the freshest results, and we've done it… Next, we're going for size - early next year, we'll be the biggest, with more Web objects indexed than any other engine."

Sounds a lot like famous statements made by the folks at Google when they were still smalltime.

But can AllTheWeb really catch up with Google? I've had nightmares about Google turning into the next Microsoft, so I like the idea of competition. If they catch up, it should fire up the search engine game nicely, but the size race could slow Google and AllTheWeb down and jeopardize the accuracy of search results.

It should be noted that we're not talking about web pages alone.

The size race is rather a case of seeing who can add the most new file types - including pdf, doc, cdr etc.

Kevin Elliot, the Web Search guide at About.com, has a nice article and insightful comments about the changes at AllTheWeb:

http://websearch.about.com/library/searchtips/bltotd011112.htm