FAST Search hasn't been publicized because its goal is to power other search engines (similar to Inktomi which powers HotBot, MSN Search and others) rather than to become a popular search engine in its own right.
Google is another little-known, but outstanding search engine. It has an index of about 85 million web pages, but because of various technical factors its reach is actually much larger.
Having begun as a Stanford University research project (see earlier review), Google is now owned by a private company. It's still in beta tests, but is searchable by web users.
Of course, size isn't everything in a search engine. A search system's effectiveness in retrieving relevant web pages, removing dead links, and finding new sites determines to a large extent how fresh and pertinent search results are likely to be. Both Google and FAST Search seem to be above average in these respects.
FAST Search - ENORMOUS ENGINE LIVES UP TO ITS NAME
FAST Search has indexed about 25% of the Internet's estimated 800,000 web pages, and expects to catalog the entire Internet in a year. From then on it plans to keep up with the web's growth. Considering that FAST Search's index grew from 80,000 pages in May to 200,000 pages by August, this seems very plausible.
True to its name, FAST Search is noticeably speedier than other engines. (Of course, there are far fewer people accessing it.) And the relevance of results is exceptional.
Search Tips
The search box at FAST Search includes only three menu choices - all of the words (must appear in each result), any of the words (can appear in each result), and the exact phrase (must appear in each result).
You can also use the plus and minus signs to require or exclude words and quotation marks to indicate a phrase.
Such a limited selection of menu choices and search syntax obviously reduces the usefulness of FAST Search for many detailed searches.
Results
Results are listed by relevance. Each result includes title, description and url. (The addition of date and size would be a big improvement.)
Special Features
FAST Search offers links to Lycos' excellent special searches for MP3 files (music) and FTP files (especially useful for software, images and music). There's also a link to FA Premier which is the online guide to the Carling Premiership football.
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